Biodiversity: a friend for life

Contents Opinion • A necessary partnership with nature 1 Nature under threat • The lair of the batfish • Uncharted territory • Doomed to early demise 2 Scientific truths • Too valuable for price-tags • Ecosystems: our unknown protectors • Genetic diversity and food security • Out of the forest and into the bottle • Borneo: reaping the fruits of ecotourism 3 The next step • Ecoprotection: an international go-slow • Kew turns over a new leaf • Towards a world conservation ethics

© Steve McCurry/ Magnum/Paris Since the time of Aristotle, we have been trying to inventory the world’s plant and animal species. Yet in the year 2000, this colossal task is nowhere near being achieved. It probably never will be, despite the efforts of taxonomists and scientists prospecting for this “green gold” (pp.18-19). Nature’s riches are beyond measure and its mechanisms all the more difficult to grasp insofar as biodiversity is a broad concept, encompassing genes, species and ecosystems (pp.20-21). But scientists are clear about one fact: the unprecedented environmental damage caused by human activity is putting a record number of species at risk of extinction (pp. 22-23). And yet, biodiversity is the very essence of life (pp. 17, 24-25). Ecosystems provide a host of environmental services (pp.26-27) that make our planet habitable. Genetic diversity is key to assuring the world’s food supply and provides a formidable gene pool for biotechnology, especially agriculture (pp. 27-29) and medicine (pp. 30-31). It also offers a boon for eco-tourism (pp. 31-32). Yet it would be a grave mistake to think we can preserve biodiversity by trying to isolate it. People are an integral part of this dynamic system. Sustainable conservation demands support for a global network of nature reserves involving local people closely in their management (pp. 33-34). Seed and gene banks, like that of Kew Gardens in London (pp. 35-36), are also gaining ground. But managing the planet’s “green gold” is also sparking legal and ethical battles beyond what anyone could have imagined in 1992, when the international community adopted the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity.