A recent review, 28 July, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series says biodiversity is in continuous decline despite rapid growth of protected land and marine areas worldwide.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services are humanity’s life-support system, delivering precious goods such as food, clean water and air, energy, minerals and ‘playgrounds’ to our advanced civilization.
“Yet there is an increasingly well-documented global trend in biodiversity loss, triggered by a host of human activities” Camilo Mora, one of the authors of the study, said.
we must get serious about addressing the growth in size and consumption rate of our global population
The leading strategy in nature conservation to reverse ongoing losses in biodiversity by creating protected areas and the successful enlargement of these protected land and marine areas over the years did not stop biodiversity loss, unfortunately. In fact the rate of biodiversity loss increased while the total area of protected land and sea expanded. Thus, expanded designation of protected areas may not be sufficient, the scientists say, which underpins the need to reassess world’s heavy reliance on this strategy. There have been some local successes, but on a global scale we have to change the approach. While efforts towards improving and increasing the number and/or size of protected areas must continue, there is a clear and urgent need for the development of additional solutions for biodiversity loss, particularly ones that stabilize the size of the world’s human population and our ecological demands on biodiversity. In other words “….. that we get serious about addressing the growth in size and consumption rate of our global population.” according to Peter F. Sale, the other author of the study.(Sources: UPI.com, 28.07.2011; ScienceDaily, 29.07.2011)
