Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
The loss of biodiversity is measured in terms of destruction and fragmentation of habitats as well as in
species extinction. Some estimates of the rate of species loss are about 100 per day predicting the
disappearance of more than a quarter of all species within the next 50 years. Unfortunately these
numbers exceed the rate of evolution of new species by a factor of 10.000 or more. The disappearance
of any specie is a critical endpoint, marking the end of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary development.
Each species is a reservoir of unique genetic information that cannot be reproduced once it is gone. In
this broader sense, any extinction, however trivial it may seem, represents a permanent loss to the
biosphere as a whole.
The extinction of species is only the final act in a process driven by unsustainable human economies.
The loss of local populations of species disrupts the sensitive web of interactions and, as mentioned
above, causes the loss of different ecosystem services essential for civilization. Undisturbed
ecosystems have shrunk dramatically in area over the past decades as human population and resource
consumption have grown. 98% of the tropical dry forest along Central America´s Pacific coast has
disappeared. Thailand lost 84% of its mangroves since 1975 and virtually none of the remainder is
undisturbed (overall it is estimated that half of the world’s mangroves forests has been destroyed). In
freshwater ecosystems, dams have destroyed large sections of river and stream habitats. In marine
ecosystems, coastal development has wiped out reef and near-shore communities. In tropical forests, a
major cause of forest loss is the expansion of agriculture, though in specific regions commercial timber
harvest may pose an even greater problem.
i. Habitat Loss and Fragmentation
Destruction and fragmentation of habitats caused by land-use changes are probably the principal
contributor to the loss of biodiversity. About 1%-2% of the earth’s land surface is used for urban
purposes, but other land acquisitions, especially for agriculture, far exceed the impact of the land sealed
by urbanisation: Homo sapiens has already converted about a quarter of all the land surface to
agricultural uses. The expansion of agricultural land has often been at the expense of species-rich
forests and wetlands which sustain a much bigger biodiversity than agriculturally used areas.
Agricultural land acquisition mainly focuses on those areas with the most favourable environmental
conditions, like fertile soils, which are often the areas of the greatest biological diversity. As much as
30% of the potential area of temperate, subtropical, and tropical forest has been lost to agriculture
though conversion and land-use changes, accompanied by the extinction of a multitude of local species.
The ecological impact of agriculture, however, largely depends on the type of agriculture applied.
ii. Industrial agriculture - agribusiness
Industrial agriculture is based on a strictly limited number of varieties where breeders cultivate just a few
high-yielding but uniform crops. Linked to agribusiness is the need for massive fertilization and the
introduction of monocultures which are vulnerable to diseases and pests. These trends are strongly
promoted in the South as well due to policies which integrate southern agricultural systems into the
world market. Large-scale plantations (or dependent contract farmers) grow only a narrow range of
crops like coffee, cocoa and bananas. As a consequence of agribusiness the cultivation of a multitude of
well adapted local varieties has been abandoned and already lead to the entire loss of some varieties of
non-commercial crops. Together with this shrinkage of plant species, there is a decline of the complex
network of supporting species, like pollinators or seed dispensers.
In addition, the privatization of genetic resources that have been engineered and patented accelerates
the trend toward monocultural cropping. Just a handful of varieties of patented hybrid corn now cover
millions of acres of the midwestern U.S. corn belt, at the expense of prairies which once hosted
thousands of varieties of grasses supporting birds and butterflies, bees and other life. Similarly will the
biodiversity of other areas shrink as patented crops take over.
FIAN International 110
June 2002