Assembling the pieces of the problem

I began writing this book in the small Galician town of Baiona where, on March 1, 1493, the arrival of the caravel Pinta from the Americas completed the initial stage of the Columbian exchange. It happens that I am back in Baiona as I write this final chapter – pulling together my conclusions about what it will take to redirect biodiversity change. I stated in the introduction to the book that this is by far the most significant environmental problem confronting humanity: that it dwarfs climate change; freshwater scarcity; soil, water, and air pollution; or any other of the environmental issues currently attracting attention. This is not due to any apocalyptic vision of the future, but to the observation that biodiversity change affects the quality of our lives in more ways, and more deeply, than any other environmental problem. The reason we are concerned about climate change, for example, is the effect it will have on life expectancy, health, and nutrition via its impacts on the species that determine these things. The reason we are concerned about freshwater lies in the importance of water for all of the species on which we depend. The reason we are concerned about pollution is the effect it has on the relative abundance of organisms in aquatic, terrestrial, and marine systems that directly support services we value.

Biodiversity change affects our ability to cope with the impact of changing environmental conditions. It may well be that our capacity to adapt to altered conditions is increased because of the scope for genetic engineering, but the scope for genetic engineering is itself constrained by the existing stock of genetic material in exactly the same way as traditional plant or animal breeding. Today’s biodiversity is what provides the raw material for the evolution of all life on earth, whether inside or outside the production landscapes we have made for ourselves. Our short-term interest lies in the scope biodiversity offers for success-ful adaptation to changing environmental conditions in the space of a generation or two. Given the fact that we happen to find ourselves at an unusually stable moment in the world’s climatic history, however, we also have a longer-term interest in maintaining our capacity to accommodate much greater environmental change.