IUCN - The World Conversation Union

“Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily harm to members of the group; physical destruction in whole or in part.”

If any of these extracts sound familiar, it’s because you’ve read them in the United Nations’ official definition of genocide. But to many people concerned with the conservation of nature, they could just as well apply to biodiversity loss. In all ways save for one key point: intent. You would be hard pressed to find a single person on this planet hell-bent on eradicating life to the last species. And yet, according to current projections, by 2050 a third of all species will have disappeared. Why?

Passive aggression; greed; indifference; ignorance; laziness, to name but a few. In all industrial endeavours, the buck stops at the bullfrog. Humanity has never really paid full price for its stunning burst of progress, nature has.

“Nature is like one big supermarket,” says Jean-Christophe Vie, Deputy Head of the IUCN’s Species Programme. “Except that everything is for free. We’ve been helping ourselves to an ever bigger share of the world’s goodies, but inevitably, the day will come when the shelves hit empty.” And we’re not too far off now.
Fortunately there is a growing trend to turn things around, to start paying our due to restock, to recycle, to restore. But the way is still as long as it is murky.

“Trends nowadays resemble a bowl of spaghetti,” says Jeff McNeely, Chief Scientist for the IUCN. “They go every way, so that at the same time as we’re seeing an increase in consumption and in pollution, we’re also seeing more and more people buy smaller cars, buy locally and buy into a greater concern for the world around them.”
No matter how much has already been lost, the last thing to go for Enrique Lahmann, the World Conservation Congress Manager, will be optimism:

“I have faith in humanity. I have faith in our capacity to change, in our understanding, and I have faith that, together, we will build a more just world where nature gets the respect it deserves.

• Choose facts.