Disrupting catastrophic wildlife declines won’t be easy. But by focusing conservation interventions on a small set of disproportionately important places and projects, we can still leverage our way out of the sixth mass extinction.
This is exactly why conservationists have long preoccupied over “biodiversity hotspots”–35 areas that jointly cover just 2.3% of Earth’s land surface but which support around half of all endemic plants, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. For decades, the feeling has been that if we can only get conservation right in these tiny land parcels, we can staunch global wildlife declines. In turn, governments and charities have funnelled billions into hotspots, protecting some of most critical but imperilled habitats on Earth.
Sadly, protection alone won’t cut it. Despite some notable successes, biodiversity is haemorrhaging even as the coverage of protected areas in hotspots and beyond has grown. Clearly, conservation interventions must tackle the underlying drivers of the ecological meltdown, not merely defend areas against them. Here too though, localised actions can deliver global rewards.
Take agriculture, the most powerful extinction engine on our planet. Yet just a handful of crops, regions and actions provide the opportunity to deflate agriculture’s environmental footprint, even whilst feeding an exploding population. Only seventeen crops take up nearly two-thirds of global croplands, deliver a staggering 86% of the world’s calories and consume some 70% of agricultural nitrogen and phosphorous.
Increasing yields of these crops to a mere half of obtainable levels over just one twentieth of their global range—predominantly on low-performing farms in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe—would be enough to meet the full calorific requirements of Ethiopia, Colombia, Russia and the Philippines combined. All without razing a single rainforest or draining a single wetland for farmland.
Meanwhile, just one tenth of Earth’s croplands, mostly in Northern India, Western Europe, China and the US produce 32% and 40% of worldwide nitrogen and phosphorous excesses. Targeted policies reducing fertiliser use and capturing excess nutrient runoff in these highly inefficient zones would cutback the poisoning of waterways and the atmosphere by a globally significant proportion.
And how about our oceans, whose ecosystems are being devastated by a one-two sucker punch of plastic pollution and invasive species? Since just ten rivers spew out over 90 percent of ocean-bound plastic, better waste management along their banks could cut plastic scourges at their source.
As for invasive aliens, which are chiefly spread as stowaways when shipping ballast waters are dumped, improving ballast treatment by only 25% at the ten “high-risk” ports of bio-invasion would reduce the threat of global spread by a quarter.
Even with overfishing, lazer-focused interventions could engineer a seismic shift towards ocean stewardship. Swedish scientists have revealed that only thirteen seafood corporations dominate up to 16% of marine catch worldwide. They have since used this discovery to launch a ground-breaking science-business initiative that tests whether a small minority of industry leaders can catalyse a global transition towards sustainable seafood production.
From Guangzhou, Fangchenggang, and Kunming, the three main pangolin trafficking hubs of China, to the five major stock exchanges scientists believe will be key to rescuing ecosystems amidst an African mining boom.
The biodiversity crisis might be massive but the solutions don’t have to be. We just need to apply pressure and innovation in the right areas. Places where even incremental improvements would yield sweeping boons for Earth’s wildlife and wild places.
Because if we can send twelve astronauts to the moon, surely we can cut plastic waste in just ten rivers, boost nutrient efficiency on a tenth of our croplands and quarter marine species invasions at only ten shipping ports?
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