Climate & Biodiversity: What it can mean to lose a species

In our Climate & Biodiversity: Converging Conventions? blog, we saw that the Intergovernmental body that studies biodiversity and ecosystems, the IPBES, issued a major report and Global Assessment in 2019. This found that humans have extensively altered 75% of the Earth’s land surface and 66% of the oceans. This may lead within decades to the extinction of 1 million species. A number of factors are driving this mass extinction. On land, they include land-use change and direct over-exploitation. In the marine ecosystem, it is more over-exploitation, such as overfishing. However, both land and oceans are adversely affected by climate change. This article considers the real value of examples of individual species, and what that implies at a time of mass extinctions.

Horseshoe crab

Horseshoe Crab - image courtesy of Michael Browning via Unsplash

On the Eastern seaboard of America, at certain phases of the moon, a species of Horseshoe crab ancient enough to have its own fossils comes ashore in vast numbers to lay its eggs in the sand of the beaches. Their movements are shadowed by huge flocks of coastal wading birds, that depend on the rich crab eggs to fatten up before being able to continue their migration. So already you have other species depending upon this one. The crabs are also harvested, on an industrial scale, by biotech companies, which draw off their unique blue blood. This blood coagulates in the presence of bacteria, and the biotech companies use it to make essential and life saving marker tests for endotoxin contamination in a huge range of surgical procedures in hospitals. This whole process and species interaction is described in detail in a book by Deborah Cramer (The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey).

The poor old crabs are released back into the sea in a weakened state, and it is not clear whether they retain the energy to continue their breeding cycle successfully. The point is, if so many forms of vital surgery are dependent on this one species, what are the full implications of losing a million species?

Amazonian plant remedies

Amazon river community - image courtesy of Nareeta Martin via Unsplash

It is reported that COVID-19 is ravaging the river communities along the River Amazon. In the summer of 2020, a documentary film maker visited an Amazonian indigenous tribal village for a report on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears that in this particular settlement the villagers lived in large communal households and close proximity. When the virus arrived, they nearly all caught it. They had no access to hospitals or intensive care, but they nearly all survived. They did this, apparently, by using their own mixture of western medicines, and a strong infusion made from the leaves of several different plants growing in and around the village. The villagers told the film makers that the infusion resulted in powerful clearing of the lungs and airways. We don’t know, because the film makers apparently did not ask, what were the plants that resulted in these healing properties, or whether these claims could be validated. What we do know is that all across the Amazon region, indigenous tribes are being driven off their lands by the incursion of miners and loggers, and an area of forest the size of the United Kingdom is lost each year.

Again, the point is, if it was correct, or even possible that three or four species of plants might hold some clue to the effective treatment of COVID-19, what could we be losing if we allow a million species to become extinct?

Climate and biodiversity are closely interlinked. The one affects the other. Forests could represent as much as a quarter of all the emissions reductions sought under the Paris Agreement, but only if those habitats and the biodiversity within them are protected. We need to see the ‘Convergence of the Conventions’ referred to in our separate blog, and mutual support between the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement on the one hand and the Convention on Biological Diversity on the other. Both main Conventions have key meetings in 2021.