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Focus on environment
The world’s ticking time bomb...
Earth’s population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate. A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life.
In a damning condemnation of Western society’s high consumption levels, it adds that extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted.
Based on scientific data from across the world, the report says more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades. Between 1970 and 2002 the Earth’s forest cover shrunk by about 12 per cent, the ocean’s biodiversity by a third and freshwater ecosystems in the region of 55 per cent.
It is not just humans who are at risk. Scientists, who examined data for 350 kinds of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, also found that the numbers of many species have more than halved.
Martin Jenkins, senior adviser for the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, which helped compile the report, said: ‘It seems things are getting worse faster than possibly ever before. Never has one single species had such an overwhelming influence. We are entering uncharted territory.”
Australia creates world’s largest marine reserve
One of the wildest places on earth — a smoking volcano covered with snow and glacial ice, rising above the world’s stormiest waters — was set aside by the government of Australia recently as the world’s largest fully protected marine reserve.
The new 6.5 million hectare Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve is 4,500 kilometres southwest of the Australian mainland and 1,000 kilometres north of Antarctica.
About the size of Ireland, the marine reserve is one of the most pristine environments left on Earth to be protected from commercial activities.
The Heard and McDonald Islands were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997 for their outstanding natural beauty and aesthetic importance.
African ivory seized in China
The Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation organizations have expressed urgent concern about elephant poaching and illegal ivory trade following the seizure in Shanghai, China of a 3.6 ton shipment of ivory from Kenya recently. It was the largest ivory smuggling bust in China to date.
The shipment included 64 packages of smuggled ivory, containing 303 whole tusks and 408 tusks that were cut into smaller pieces. The ivory was hidden in a 20-foot container and was declared to Chinese customs to contain wood board from Kenya.
The Kenyan wildlife authorities indicated that Kenya is being used as a transit point for illegal ivory. Kenya now protects a population of between 25,000 and 27,000 elephants.
Over 16 tons of African ivory has been seized, mostly in Asia, in 2002. This is a dramatic increase since the year before and the volumes of ivory in trade are much larger than before.
Trade in most populations of African elephants or their parts has been banned worldwide since 1990 as they are listed on the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. Elephants in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa are protected under CITES which permits trade only if that trade will not be detrimental to the survival of the species in the wild.
Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are proposing to export specific quantities of ivory under controlled conditions. Kenya and India are proposing to protect all African elephant populations and prohibit commercial trade.
“One day we will realize that elephants cannot be reduced to the value of their teeth,” said Dr Paula Kahumbu, CITES coordinator for the Kenya Wildlife Service. “Elephants are and will always be synonymous with the greatness of Africa.”
The writer works in Communications for IUCN-The World Conservation Union, Pakistan.
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