Publisher :
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2009
Thematic : Climate Change and Biodiversity
Language : English
Note
The climate is changing because humans are rapidly converting fossil carbon into atmospheric
greenhouse gases. Why is biodiversity changing?
Reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would (perhaps) slow
future change. This is true no matter how complex the mechanism by which buried carbon
becomes atmospheric gas, or by which those gases drive climate change. The target almost
sets itself – or it would if politics and economics did not complicate things. What target pops
out at you from the radical anthropogenic transformation of biodiversity?
Stopping anthropogenic climate change will certainly be difficult. But we know what
distinguishes the observed rate of change from the desired rate of change, and we know what
actions would narrow the gap between what we see and what we'd like to see. In this respect,
then, climate change is not a wicked problem – though in other respects it certainly is.
A wicked problem2
is one that is poorly understood and resists clear definition.
A text-book example of a wicked problem is this: what must we do to stop the further loss of
biodiversity? If we can answer that question, then we can begin to set sensible targets.
What is the cause of the loss of biodiversity? We can not point to a single driver like
"humans are transforming fossil carbon into greenhouse gas". Instead it has many linked
causes. They include profit-driven, growth-based economies, a growing human population
with steeply increasing demands on the living world, ineffective institutions, poverty,
accounting that externalises environmental costs, greed, war, protectionism, climate change,
lack of political will, subsidies, corruption, inequitable access to the benefits of living
resources, wilful ignorance, and a global trade regime fit for a different planet. All of these
causes also help to change the composition of the atmosphere, but in every case, we can point
to one cause: emission of greenhouse gases. In that tangle of causes, can you or anyone else
say where, exactly, lies the cause of loss of the living fabric of our planet?
Well, OK, let's try something easier. Can you define a desirable status for biodiversity? One
that I could step outside and measure, as I might measure, with appropriate instruments, the
concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?
Perhaps the word "status" is unfair, since ecosystems are dynamic. But while it may be more
accurate, it does not make the question any easier to answer – if you can't define a desirable
status, how might you go about defining a desirable dynamic for biodiversity?
Go to source
Keywords : climate-change
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
