Twenty years ago, an article in Science, entitled “Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems”, concluded his assessment of the consequences of anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems [I]:
“The global consequences of human activity are not something to be faced in the future. They are with us now. All of these changes are ongoing and in many cases, accelerating. Many of them were triggered long before their importance was recognized. (...) Recent calculations suggest that species extinction rates are now 100 to 1.000 times greater than before human domination of the Earth.”
The work showed the scale of the environmental catastrophe unleashed in the 1997th century and worsened in the second half of that century. But it was 1960 and everything still seemed possible. After all, since the 1962s, the world seemed to have become aware of the danger. In 1956, Rachel Carson's warning about the effects of DDT had caught the attention of the general public for the first time. If “real socialism”, especially after the denunciation of Stalin's crimes in 1953 and the revolts in Berlin (1956), Hungary (1968) and Prague (1968), proved to be discouraging, other social movements, especially youth, they had been creating an alternative worldview to the rampant consumerism and the ideology of the “one-dimensional man”, to resurrect a term then coined by Herbert Marcuse. The action of environmental NGOs, intellectuals and scientists mobilized in the USA by the Union of Concerned Scientists (XNUMX) had gained scale, reinvigorating politics and critical thinking. Even Paul and Anne Ehrlich's predictions about the imminence of a greater crisis of global food insecurity seemed to have been removed (or, better yet, postponed) by the so-called Green Revolution, led by Norman Borlaug, holder of multiple honors, in addition to the Nobel Prize for Peace [II].
It is easy to understand, in this context, the impact of ECO-92. The immense resonance of this international meeting crowned an entire process of becoming aware of the environmental unfeasibility of the logic of capitalist accumulation, and its momentum It was then such that it had the power to make people believe that capitalism could become environmentally “sustainable”.
In fact, on the occasion of ECO-92, the heads of state of 194 nations, or their representatives, signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, (CBD), the most emblematic formulation of the importance of biodiversity and the need to halt its destruction. It is worth, first of all to savor the mood prevailing in those days, to remember their beginning [III]:
“The Contracting Parties:
“Aware of the intrinsic value of biological diversity and the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components.
Also aware of the importance of biological diversity for the evolution and maintenance of life support systems in the biosphere.
Stating that the conservation of biological diversity is a common concern of humanity (...)
Reaffirming that States are responsible for conserving their own biological diversity and for using their biological resources sustainably
Concerned that biological diversity is being significantly reduced by certain human activities (...)
Determined to conserve and sustainably use biological diversity for the benefit of present and future generations
Agree what follows... (and reading what followed, one gets the impression that the community of nations was competing with Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs for the pinnacle of ecological awareness).
The current dystopia
Today, 25 years later, we see how the words of that beautiful declaration, which had, moreover, the status of a treaty for the countries that ratified it, were systematically contradicted by the ecocidal action of its signatories. Triumphant globalization, which gained momentum in the Reagan-Thatcher years, favored the process by which agriculture metamorphosed into agribusiness, controlled by a tiny corporate and globalized elite. O Big food became the Siamese brother of the chemical industry and Big Oil, and this to the point that, nowadays, around 95% of the production of seeds, pesticides, additives and chemical fertilizers are in the hands of five agrochemical megacorporations, an oligopoly that almost completely dominates the world food system, as shown by Figure 1.
Additionally, 17 trades – Dangote, Cargill, Bunge, Glencore etc – control the international trade in food, transformed into soft commodities (cattle, pigs, cocoa, coffee, milk, corn, wheat, soybeans, etc.), traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) as derivatives in the form of options and futures contracts.
If to this food hijacking by the state-corporate network we add the global carnivorism bomb of recent decades, also detonated by agribusiness, we will begin to understand more clearly the causes and fundamental dynamics of the ongoing devastating annihilation of life on the planet. Since 2001, this corporate complex – agribusiness, chemical industry, oil, trades and the financial markets of commodities – is the biggest culprit for the loss of more than 2,5 million km2 of forest, habitat for “more than 80% of all species of animals, plants and insects” [IV]. It is also the main responsible for the growing water scarcity, the advancement of the agricultural frontier, the increasingly intensive use of soil, with the consequent loss of its biological wealth. [IN], by the proliferation of dead zones in the aquatic environment caused by nitrogen fertilizers and by the death or chemical intoxication of organisms, resulting from the increasing use of pesticides.
the sixth extinction
These combined and combined impacts are at the root of what has been called the sixth, and potentially the most exterminating, mass extinction of our planet's species.. In relation to the five great mass extinctions that occurred in the Phanerozoic (the last of them around 65 million years ago), the sixth extinction has four characteristics of its own:
(1) Cause. The sixth extinction is not triggered by um event's audience exceptional and external, but for a continuous and internal process to the biosphere, anthropic interference on the biosphere, a conscious, announced and unequivocally accelerating process.
(2) Dynamics. Unlike the previous five extinctions, the dynamics of the sixth extinction is not that of the radiation of waves from a point of impact (meteors or volcanoes), as occurs when a stone falls into a pool of water, the disturbance of which tends to cool down as its range of action expands in space and extends over time. The dynamics of the sixth extinction are determined by a process that, on the contrary, intensifies in space and time and, furthermore, amplifies more on the periphery of the economic system (the tropics, richest in biodiversity) than in its center ( industrialized countries).
(3) Speed. The third characteristic of the sixth extinction, perhaps the most crucial, is its lightning speed. It is not, like the previous ones, measurable on a geological scale, but on a historical scale, and the unit of time in which this scale is measured is becoming shorter. In 1900, it occurred on the scale of centuries. Fifty years ago, the most appropriate observation scale would perhaps have been the decade. Today, the unit for measuring the advance of the sixth extinction is the year or even the day. According to Rodolfo Dirzo and co-authors of a 2014 review [YOU], “we are losing between around 11 thousand and 58 thousand species annually”, which means somewhere between 30 and 159 species on average per day. As early as 2005, the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment stated: “The known extinction rates of species in the 50th century were 500 to 0,1 times greater than the extinction rate calculated from fossil records, which is 1 to 1.000 extinction per 1.000 species per 1.000 years. The current rate is up to 2050 times higher than baseline extinction rates, if we include species that are possibly already extinct.” And the same document projects that in 10.000 the extinction rate will be an order of magnitude greater than current rates, that is, a rate XNUMX times greater than the base rate [VII].
(4) Consequences. The fourth singularity of the sixth extinction is the fact that it is a process without winners. Far from resulting in the dominance of our species over others, the sixth extinction also makes the human species vulnerable by undoing the web of biological support that allowed it to thrive and, for a moment, cultivate the illusion of dominating it. In 2012, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, director general of IUCN, in a statement to delegations gathered at Rio+20, warned [VIII]: “Sustainability is a matter of life and death for humanity. A sustainable future cannot be achieved without conserving biological diversity – animal species, their habitats and their genes – not only for nature itself, but also for the 7 billion human beings who depend on it.”
Figure 2 shows how the sixth extinction threatens a wide range of taxa
Based on this assessment, the United Nations Environment Program released a document entitled Extinction crisis shows urgent need for action to protect biodiversity. That year, the picture of the sixth extinction looked like this [IX]:
“One-third of the world’s amphibians, one-fifth of mammals and 70% of all plants are threatened. (...) Of the 47.677 species assessed, 17.291 are threatened with extinction. More than 1.000 freshwater fish are threatened with extinction; 12% of all known birds, 28% of reptiles and 35% of invertebrates are threatened. (...) Around 114 plants are in the “Extinct” or “Extinct in the wild” categories.
In 2016, the date of the last edition of the IUCN Red List of threatened species, of the 85.604 species assessed, no less than 24.307 species (28,4%) are considered threatened with extinction.
Regarding defaunation [X] of the vertebrate subphylum, estimates from the Global Living Planet Index (GLPI), adopting the year 100 as Index 1970, show an average global population decline of the order of 52% in 2010 and 58% in 2012. More recently, the GLPI projects for 2020, still in relation to 1970, a decline of 67%, as shown in Figure 3.
invertebrates
Assessments of the population decline of invertebrates are much less precise, especially on a global scale, first and foremost because they constitute the overwhelming majority of land animals. According to Robert M. May, the number of species increases in inverse proportion to their size [XIV], and invertebrates make up, according to this author, 97% of all animal species, with only Arthropods, the largest existing phylum, covering 84% of known animal species [XII].
Given its impact on agriculture, the current collapse of bees has been widely studied and publicized, and for years has been the subject of a fierce political struggle between, on the one hand, civil society and, on the other, megacorporations, producers of pesticides of the class neonicotinoids, one of the products identified as responsible for pollinator deaths. In Europe, this fight is once again being won by corporations. Despite the accumulation of scientific evidence, corporations, which influence regulatory agencies, obtained authorization last July to sell sulfoxaflor, produced by Dow AgroSciences, a pesticide similar to neonicotinoids, already banned in the USA, and which also acts on receptors of the central nervous system of insects [XIII].
The bee population catastrophe, known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder) currently affects wild bees and apiaries in the USA, Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan, the Middle East and Brazil. This collapse of bees and other pollinating insects is the most visible part of a much broader phenomenon, which Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, a collective of scientists formed in 2009, is characterizing as “an accelerated decline of all insect species since the 1990s” [XIV]. It can be extended to invertebrates in general, as stated in 2014 the aforementioned review proposed by Rodolfo Dirzo and colleagues based on the few comprehensive data then available [XIV]:
“Globally, data from long-term monitoring of a sample of 452 invertebrate species indicate a widespread decline in the abundance of individuals since 1970. Only with regard to lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), for which there is better data, there is strong evidence of global declines in abundance (35% over 40 years).”
The authors then drew attention to the fact that the decline of invertebrates, in such samples, was 45%. Furthermore, of the 3.623 invertebrate species assessed by the IUCN in 2014, 42% were classified as threatened with extinction.
A new quantification of insect decline
Last week, a study published in PLOS One by Caspar A. Hallmann and colleagues sheds new light on the scale of the ongoing catastrophe in Europe, drawing no longer on indicators of population abundance of specific species or taxonomic groups, but on “changes in insect biomass, which are most relevant to ecological functioning” [XVI]. From observations conducted in 63 nature reserves in Germany, its authors estimate “a seasonal decline of 76% and a midsummer decline of 82% of flying insect biomass over 27 years of study.” Figure 4, created by Michael McCarthy from this study, provides an immediate picture of the extent of this decline.
Life on our planet largely depends on insects
Although these same data cannot be extrapolated to the tropics [XVII], the premise that insects are a structural pillar supporting biodiversity is valid for the entire planet. Indeed, as Hallmann and colleagues state:
“The loss of insects will certainly have adverse effects on the functionality of ecosystems, as insects play a fundamental role in a variety of processes, including pollination, herbivory, detritivory, nutrient cycles and food sources for higher trophic levels such as birds, mammals and amphibians. For example, 80% of wild plants depend on insects for pollination and 60% of birds rely on insects as a food source.”
The animal and plant kingdoms would not be sustainable without insects and notably without invertebrate pollinators. Bees, flies, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths, etc. are fundamental not only for the functionality of ecosystems, but also, and no less, for men. As the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) group demonstrates, globally, pollinators improve or stabilize yields for three-quarters of agricultural crops, meaning one-third of yields by volume. Furthermore, 90% of the vitamin C we need comes from fruits, vegetables, oils and seeds pollinated by insects. [XVIII].
The illusion that we can live without insects and without preserving their habitats is revealed today, more than half a century after Silent spring by Rachel Carson, the blindness, arrogance, greed and criminal irresponsibility of agribusiness and the corporate complex that controls it and that profits in the short term from insect deaths.
[I] See Peter M. Vitousek, Harold A. Mooney, Jane Lubchenco & Jerry M. Melillo, “Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems”. Science, 277, 5325, 25/VII/1997, pp. 494-499: “The global consequences of human activity are not something to face in the future. They are with us now. All of these changes are ongoing, and in many cases accelerating; many of them were entrained long before their importance was recognized.”.
[II] Borlaug himself warned in 1970 that “the green revolution was successful temporary in man’s war against hunger and deprivation.” Quoted by Anthony D. Barnosky & Elizabeth A. Hadly, End Game: Tipping Point for Planet Earth? London, 2015.
[III] See ifhttp://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf>.
[IV] United Nations, 2015: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: “Forests are home to more than 80% of all terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects.” About this extent of forest loss, measured by Global Forest Watch, cf. Matthew C. Hansen et al., “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change”. Science, 342, 6160, 15/XI/2013, pp. 850-853
[IN] Cf. Martin M. Gossner et al., “Land-use intensification causes multitrophic homogenization of grassland communities”. Nature, 540, 8/XII/2016, pp. 266-269. I thank Prof. Thomas M. Lewinsohn, co-author of this work, on his recommendation.
[YOU] See R. Dirzo, Hillary S. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, NJB Isaac & Ben Collen, “Defaunation in the Anthropocene”. Science, 345, 6195, 25/VII/2014, pp. 401-406.
[VII] Cf. Ecosystems and human well-being. Synthesis, 2005, p. 38 (network).
[VIII] See ifhttp://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3060-updated-list-threatened-species.html>.
[IX] Cf.http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=602&ArticleID=6360&l=en>.
[X] Defaunation includes not only the extinction of species, but their decline in population abundance.
[XIV] See RM May, “How Many Species are there on Earth?” Science, 241, 4872, 16/IX/1988, pp. 1441-1449.
[XII] Cf. R. Leakey & R. Lewin, The Sixth Extinction. Biodiversity and its Survival. London, 1996, pp. 38-39.
[XIII] Cf. Stéphane Foucart, “Les apiculteurs dénoncent l'autorisation d'un nouveau neonicotinoïde in France". Le Monde, 19/X/2017.
[XIV] See Stéphane Foucart, “Le déclin massif des insects menace l'agriculture”. Le Monde, 25/VI/2014.
[XIV] Cf. R. Dirzo et al. (Cit.).
[XVI] Cf. Caspar A. Hallmann et al., “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas”. Plos One, 18/X/2017 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809.
[XVII] I thank Prof. Thomas M. Lewinsohn, from the Unicamp Biology Institute, for clarifications regarding the impossibility of parallels between the European and tropical situations.
[XVIII] “What is causing the decline in pollinating insects?” LWEC (networked).
