[新聞] What Would It Cost to Save Nature?

[NPLNT (Bruzi Geist)]

※ [本文轉錄自 IA 看板]

作者: NPLNT (Bruzi Geist) 看板: IA
標題: [新聞] What Would It Cost to Save Nature?
時間: Sat May 24 14:15:53 2008


標題:What Would It Cost to Save Nature?


新聞來源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,554982,00.html
                                 (需有正確連結)


By Philip Bethge, Rafaela von Bredow and Christian Schwagerl

How much is the Earth worth to us? At a global conference in Bonn, Germany,
representatives of 191 nations are discussing a revolution in conservation.
By making a highly profitable business out of saving forests, whales and
coral reefs, environmentalists hope to put a stop to a dramatic wave of
extinctions.

The envoy from Europe can hardly believe his eyes. Butterflies the size of
dessert plates are fluttering around his nose. Orchids hang in cascades from
towering trees. Hornbills sail across the treetops. The tropical air is
filled with the saturated scent of growth and proliferation.

Biologists have already tracked down more than 10,000 plant and 400 mammal
species in the Congo basin. These plants and animals are part of the world's
second-largest uninterrupted rainforest, one of the planet's most potent
carbon storage systems. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that Hans
Schipulle, 63, is tramping around in the wilderness near the Sangha River on
a humid morning in the Central African Republic.

"This forest stores carbon dioxide, and thus helps to slow down global
warming. It regulates the global water supply and holds valuable
pharmaceuticals," says Schipulle, a veteran environmentalist who works for
the German government. "We must finally realize that these are services that
are worth something to us."

Schipulle is in the region on a sensitive mission. Since December, he has
headed the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), a group founded by
Americans, Europeans and the countries along the Congo River. The alliance
aims to prevent the Congo basin from being plundered and transformed into oil
palm and coffee plantations by mid-century. The Congo rainforest is still
largely in one piece, but investors from around the world have already
discovered the region's potential for big business -- ore, diamonds,
plantations and lumber. But Schipulle and his partners have other plans for
the Congo basin. They want international financial institutions or the world
community to fork over money to preserve the rainforest as it is today. The
threat of clear-cutting poses a double risk for the world. First, destroying
the Congo rainforest would eliminate one of the earth's most important
cooling systems. Second, the carbon dioxide (CO2) released as a result of
slash-and-burn agriculture would further accelerate global warming.

Bayanga, a nearby village, is living proof of the traditional conflict
between protecting the environment and fighting poverty. Until recently, its
residents benefited from the destruction of the rainforest. A sawmill in
Bayanga provided employment for 370 people, but the mill was shut down after
Schipulle and his alliance presented an urgent appeal to the government in
the capital Bangui to prevent a dubious logging company from being allowed to
overexploit 4,520 square kilometers (1,745 square miles) of forest.

It was a small victory for nature, but village residents still need work and
income. An eco-tourism project sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) has created jobs
for only 94 people so far, providing the community with about €10,000
($15,500) in annual revenue -- but not enough to reduce poverty.

How can Schipulle explain to the people of Bayanga what their forest means
for the rest of the world? Is it really possible that eco-tourism,
environmentally responsible forestry and coffee plantations along the fringe
of the future protected forest regions will be capable of feeding the men,
women and children of the village?

An Emissions Trading Market for the Congo Rainforest 

Schipulle firmly believes in this vision. The World Bank already plans to
incorporate the entire Congo basin into its Forest Carbon Partnership
program. The Washington-based organization wants to enter the emissions
trading market with the CO2 stored by the Congo rainforest. Because
deforestation in tropical regions is responsible for about 20 percent of
climate change, protecting the forest is synonymous with protecting the
climate -- and the world community is increasingly willing to pay a lot of
money to make that happen.

The possible rescue of the Congo rainforest is only one of many examples. A
new age of conservation is dawning. For the first time, a value is being
assigned to forests, plants and coral reefs, a value that makes them worthy
of protection. It is nothing short of a paradigm shift in the environmental
movement.

Romantic notions about nature and the environment aside, governments,
conservationists and scientists are posing new questions, the answers to
which will shape the future of mankind: How much is the Earth worth? Can the
value of its diversity be quantified? How much should taking inventory of the
planet be worth to us? Finally, who should foot the bill for decades of
mismanagement at nature's expense?

Officials from around the world are currently addressing these crucial
concerns at a United Nations conference on bio-diversity in Bonn, Germany.
Representatives from 191 nations and roughly 250 environmental, conservation
and development aid organizations are focusing on ways to stop the loss of
species and natural habitats. Dozens of draft resolutions, many of them
controversial despite being formulated in the dry language of international
diplomacy, are under review. Even the name of the gathering belies its
importance: the Ninth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity.

At issue in Bonn is no less than the future of the planet and man's dramatic
failure to leave a livable earth to his children. Wilderness, species,
habitats and ecosystems are disappearing at an unprecedented rate. From one
day to the next, human beings wipe out between three and 130 species,
depending on which estimate you go by. Each year, virgin forest
one-and-a-half times the size of Switzerland falls victim to logging. Moors
are disappearing, rivers are being forced into concrete channels and erosion
is transforming mountainsides into wasteland.

A Nail in the Coffin for the Amazon Rainforest? 

Agriculture is taking up an ever larger portion of the Earth, especially now
that plants are no longer grown solely as food, but also -- like sugar cane
and oil palm -- to produce biofuel. Just last week, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel signed an energy agreement in Brasilia with Brazilian President Lula
da Silva. Under the agreement, Brazil can continue to supply Germany with
biofuel as long as it complies with certain environmental standards. But for
many environmental protection groups, the deal is merely another nail in the
coffin for the Amazon rainforest.

In addition, the destruction of nature and global warming tend to reinforce
one another. When sea levels rise and mangrove forests disappear, coastlines
become more exposed to the elements than ever before. As carbon dioxide
continues to acidify the oceans , the calcium structures of corals,
snails and mussels become brittle.

At issue is the survival of exotic species like the red-headed vulture, the
Banggai cardinalfish, the Gulf of California harbor porpoise, the Santa
Catalina rattlesnake and the Indian gharial. But the survival of mankind as a
species is also at stake, as the example of the recent cyclone in Burma
illustrates. If the mangrove forests that once protected the
Burmese coastline had been intact, the flooding would likely have been much
less devastating.

Without corals, many types of fish would not exist, because reefs protect
fish as they mature. The flora and fauna of the oceans hold potential cancer
drugs worth, according to economists' estimates, as much as $1 billion (€645
million) a year.

Many of the things humanity considers costly and desirable are also part of
biodiversity, such as turbot fillets, teak garden furniture and caviar from
Russian sturgeon. But we also value the song of the nightingale, the scent of
lilac, a view of untamed mountains, empty meadows and dense jungles.

The parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), well aware of
these riches, hope to "significantly" slow down the loss of eco-systems and
species by 2010. But what exactly does this "sufficiently fuzzy objective"
mean, Jochen Flasbarth, head of nature protection at Germany's Environment
Ministry (BMU) asks sarcastically?

At the Bonn conference, about 6,000 experts are debating exactly that
question. Ideally, they will bring meaning to what might otherwise be empty
words and phrases, but in the worst case scenario the conference will end in
little more than bland declarations of intent. The parties can only adopt
resolutions in consensus, and there are no mechanisms to apply pressure to
obstructionists.

Despite the potential difficulties, some of the approaches being taken at the
conference are at least promising:


◆One of the goals is to create a global network of sanctuaries with
representative habitats. 

◆Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a model, the
delegates hope to establish a panel of experts for the biodiversity
convention that brings together representatives of the scientific and
political communities. 

◆The agenda calls for the fair balancing of interests between developing
countries, with their abundant diversity, and the industrialized nations,
which want to exploit these resources. 

◆The experts intend to search for new mechanisms to pay for the protection of
diversity. Without new sources of funding, all negotiation can be nothing but
empty talk. 

"This conference deals with economic interests," says German Environment
Minister Sigmar Gabriel. According to Gabriel, it is critical that we assign
"a measurable cost to the loss (of environment)," or else we run the risk "of
deleting data from nature's hard drive." Chancellor Merkel has already
indicated that she will announce a significant increase in German government
funding for the protection of the world's forests when she appears at the
conference next Wednesday. Norway, which invests $500 million (€323 million)
a year, is her benchmark. Back home, the government in Berlin is urging
German states, responsible for domestic environmental protection issues, to
allow 10 percent of forests owned by states and municipalities to return to
nature.

Environment Minister Gabriel also plans to present the initial results of a
study, initiated in collaboration with the European Union, on the global
costs of species and habitat loss. According to an excerpt SPIEGEL has
obtained of the document -- titled "The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity" -- the loss of biodiversity costs the world 6 percent of global
gross domestic product. Poor countries are the hardest-hit. The annual cost
of species and habitat loss amounts to as much as half of their already
modest economic strength.

"Protecting diversity is much cheaper than allowing its destruction," says
Indian economist Pavan Sukhdev, who Gabriel and EU Environment Commissioner
Stavros Dimas convinced to head the study. Biodiversity -- and efforts to
preserve it -- could in fact become an enormous business in the future. The
new conservationists hope to sell intact forests because they store the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). They also expect to see drugs developed
from creatures like the cone snail and corals produce handsome profits in the
future. The last oases of diversity are also expected to attract more and
more well-heeled eco-tourists.

"Bonn has to push for a breakthrough," says Achim Steiner, the head of the
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). To this day, according to Steiner,
the promises made at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 16 years ago, where
both the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on
Biological Diversity were born, have "not been kept or have been
systematically broken."

Biodiversity is more than just the diversity of plant and animal species. It
also encompasses the entire cornucopia of habitats, as well as the genetic
information that lies hidden, as a biological treasure, in many organisms
that have yet to be studied. Experts estimate that the planet's inventory
includes between 10 and 20 million species of animals, plants, fungi and
microbes. This diversity is not evenly distributed, however. Life is
concentrated in so-called hot spots, which include regions like the
Mediterranean coast, the tropical Andes and the Philippines.

And the future of diversity is not bright. Take Germany, for example.
According to a study published in April by the German Federal Agency for
Nature Conservation (BfN), titled "Facts about Nature 2008," 36 percent of
all animal species studied in Germany are threatened. More than two-thirds of
German habitats are considered threatened. Nature reserves make up only 3.3
percent of the country's land mass. Every day, 113 hectares (279 acres) of
land disappear under asphalt and concrete.

The global situation is equally alarming. Last year, the International Union
for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red listed 16,297 plant and animal species
as threatened, including almost a third of all amphibians, one in eight bird
species and almost one-fourth of all mammal species. To develop its list, the
IUCNB evaluated more than 41,000 species. The ones on its threatened list
make up close to 40 percent of the total.





--
「只有在人們能夠自由地利用和享受知識帶來的好處時，新知識的發現才對他們有價值。
新發現對所有的人都有潛在的價值，但不是犧牲人們所有的現實價值為代價。無限發展的
『進步』不能給任何人帶來好處，那麼這『進步』就是一種恐怖的謬論。」

                                            Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness>

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◆ From: 59.113.10.44
※ 編輯: NPLNT           來自: 59.113.10.44         (05/24 14:16)
推 swallow73:雖然文章聲稱環境保存的經濟利潤大於開採利潤減去環境
→ swallow73:損失,能否在政策上把環境保護的利潤回饋到貧困國家的
→ swallow73:貧民上,提供他們保護自然生態的誘因,恐怕才是整項行動
→ swallow73:能否成功的重點.不過看來連富裕國家自己的生態保護都搞
→ swallow73:不定了,恐怕要成功是很困難的.
→ swallow73:況且保護環境的經濟利潤似乎也不會回饋到從開採中取得
→ swallow73:龐大利潤的大企業上,要說服他們收手,應該也不是易事.
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