The 1614th Biological Symposium:
Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 14:00 - 15:30
Place: Seminar room - Library 3F:B301
Speaker: Peter H. Raven (Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.)
Title: Global Stability and the Conservation of Biodiversity
Summary:
When agriculture was first developed, some 11,200 years ago, the human
population of the whole world consisted of only 3-4 million people, living
in small groups of hunter gathers who were mostly on the move from place to place. Humans have existed on earth for about 2 million years, so that the development of crops and the domestication of animals occurred at a very late stage in our history. When the crops and domestic animals began to produce abundant supplies of food, however, the human population began to grow rapidly, reaching 1 billion people early in the 19th century and climbing to nearly 7.1 billion people at present. Another billion people will be added, mainly to the poor population of the world, during the next 12 years, and 1-1.5 billion more during the subsequent 25 years. Japan currently has a population of about 122.8 million people, falling at a rate that would lead to a population of 95.5 million people by middle of the century. Its current population density, 338 people per km², is relatively low, but reflects the mountainous nature of the county, which makes many areas unsuitable for permanent habitation. Japan, where consumption greatly exceeds bioproductivity, clearly cannot in any medium or long-term sense be isolated from a world that is growing so rapidly. The sustainability of the rest of the world is taken to Japan and makes possible a very high standard of living, but the world as a whole has a rapidly growing human population; rapidly increasing consumption levels and expectations; and many technologies that are clearly environmentally unsustainable. Japan’s prosperity depends on the sustainability of many countries; for example, importing wood that is harvested unsustainably in South East Asia and elsewhere is a short-term strategy that contributes to the destruction of sustainability of those countries and will ultimately make it impossible for them to send more products abroad. In the light of these relationships, it is necessary, if unpalatable, for Japan to consider its population policy and the level of consumption that it can maintain. Taken together, these activities and pressures use up an estimated 150% of global bioproductivity currently, up from 70% in 1970 (footprintnetwork.org), a rate that cannot be sustained. Not surprisingly, the pressures we generate are driving an episode of biological extinction at a rate that the world has not experienced for some 65 million years. Estimates rise to as high as more than half of all the species in the world becoming extinct by the end of this century. This amounts to an irreparable loss since we depend for all aspects of our lives on the individual and collective properties of these organisms. The choices that are available for improving the quality and sustainability of human life in the future also depend on our ability to deal with and preserve these organisms. The more systematic the approach in Japan to gaining information about organisms and making it
available, the better chances for effective conservation of the nation’s
incredibly rich biodiversity, perhaps half of which is found nowhere else.
Many strategies are available for conservation both in situ and ex situ, and these should be used extensive in a Japan that will lose many of its species to global climate change and other causes over the coming decades. To the extent that it becomes a leader in this field, Japan can play an important role as a global model.
