Thursday 4 February 2021

Report for UK Treasury warns destruction of nature puts world at ‘extreme risk’

A landmark review, commissioned by the UK Treasury and conducted by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, the Cambridge University economist, has warned the world is being put at "extreme risk" by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world, and that almost all governments were exacerbating the biodiversity crisis by paying people more to exploit nature than to protect it:
Prof Dasgupta warns: 
Nature is our home. Good economics demands we manage it better.
Truly sustainable economic growth and development means recognising that our long-term prosperity relies on rebalancing our demand of nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them. It also means accounting fully for the impact of our interactions with nature. Covid-19 has shown us what can happen when we don’t do this.
Lord Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics, says: 
The Dasgupta review shows we are running down our natural capital fast, and we will pay the price. 
In 2019, a UN report warned that one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, that "biodiversity… is declining faster than at any time in human history." Prof Bob Watson, who led that assessment, said:  
The most important thing is that the Dasgupta review was commissioned by the UK Treasury ministry, not the environment department. Hopefully this will mean that finance ministries around the world will acknowledge that the loss of nature is an economic issue, not simply an environmental issue.


What does destruction of nature look like – from a cement industry perspective? Here’s a taster:
 
A cement company blew up the entire hill and all remaining molluscs with it. All that is left of its former habitat is a big hole in the ground filled with water.  
 
Scientists and experts say limestone karst and limestone caves are the most specialized habitats in the Philippines because they often harbor unique species of flora and fauna that are highly restricted in distribution.

 

In November, in a preliminary summary of a survey of the site, a team of seven scientists reported that years of quarrying had “caused the extinction of a number of species”. The cement company, Holcim Vietnam, has said it is helping to supply badly needed raw materials for Vietnam’s booming construction industry, and is working with scientists to offset its environmental impacts.

 
“They said, ‘you can work here from morning until three o’clock, but then you have to leave because we’re going to blow it up’”

 

Oun used to climb high into the mountain’s side, collecting wood and selling it in the village. He would encounter wild boar, monkeys, chickens and snakes. There were rumours of tigers too. Now, even the village cows won’t get close, scared off by explosions that have been known to shake people off their motorbikes.

 
The karsts are full of nooks and crannies that have nurtured highly specialized plants and animals found nowhere else. They are also important to humans, studded with small altars and temples that are thought to be homes to neak ta, landscape spirits in the local animist pantheon. Soon, they will be gone. 

 

We've posted about this issue before, here and here. 

Dr Tony Whitten, a senior advisor with Fauna and Flora International, had documented the problem, warning "this is a global issue": 
 ... Whitten says the cement industry has become fixated with trumpeting the restoration of sites they destroy, rather than taking a rational, proactive landscape approach which would include sustainable management and protection. 
“No cement business has ever admitted the scale of the problem. They tout their biodiversity pages in their websites and sustainability reports with pictures of ducks and frogs and children enjoying the wetlands created from the hills they remove. They give and receive prizes for their restoration work – but do not acknowledge what is being lost.”
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