‘Genetic bankruptcy’

We mark World Environment Day 2011 on Sunday. Conservation is the theme that 128 countries will stress. This contrasts with headlines here, where we read that poachers have wrecked coral reefs “five times the size of Metro Manila.”

Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri heads a committee that examines smuggling of black coral and rare sea shells. This is not another police-blotter story. The issue is about plundering “rainforests of the sea.”

Reefs nurture a quarter of all marine species. A fifth of the fish, on our dinner tables, come from reefs. They provide income for 7 out of every 10 small fishermen.

Worldwide, reefs are about the size of France. Yet, they have clout at cash registers. Their annual global economic worth from tourism, fisheries, etc. is pegged at $375 billion.

Providence gifted us with one of Southeast Asia’s biggest reefs covering 27,000 square kilometers. But that is past tense. Only a sliver of one percent remains in “pristine” condition, says World Wide Fund for Nature’s Jose Ma. Lorenzo.

Healthy reefs (959 sq km) today are “no bigger than Marinduque,” estimates Porfirio Aliño of UP’s Marine Science Institute. These fragments dot the waters of the Visayas and other points south. They are only 5 percent of the original legacy.

Why are we surprised?

In 1998, the World Resources Institute (WRI) study, titled “Reefs at Risk,” already pinpointed Philippine reef degradation. Other countries on that vulnerable list were: Comoros, Fiji, Haiti, Indonesia, Kiribati, Tanzania and Vanuatu.

“[Much] of their population depends on reefs for their livelihood,” the study said. “But their capacity to adapt is low.”

That was 13 years ago.

In February this year, WRI released “Reefs at Risk Revisited.” Old exploitative fishing is compounded by the new threat of climate change, this update concludes. “Regionally, Southeast Asia is the worst affected region. [Almost] 95 percent of reefs are on the threatened list.”

Lower the pressure, urges Nature Conservancy’s Mark Spalding. Otherwise, “in 50 years most reefs will be just banks of eroding limestone, overgrown with algae and grazed by a tiny variety of small fish.”

Yesterday’s ravaging of reefs denies us a breathing spell, let alone 50 years. Pressure is simultaneously ratcheting in other ecosystems.

Soil erosion blights over 52 percent of croplands. In 1595, forests blanketed 27.5 million hectares here. Today, a bare quarter of a million is left. The last natural growth timber stands in Samar are being chain-sawed. Fishery catches have plummeted.

Yet, these faltering systems must produce 60 percent more food over the next generation. The pre-World War II census counted 19 million  Filipinos. There will be 101.6 million of us, probably more, when President Aquino leaves Malacañang in 2016.

The number of  endangered plant and animal species is bolting. That also mirrors the ratcheting stress.

Here, 566 species of  birds, trees and  mammals are threatened, notes the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Of these, 84 are “critically endangered.”

“Less than 10 countries in the entire world have a situation that is more critical than the Philippines,” IUCNNR adds. “Most of the other countries are significantly bigger (in terms of land mass).”

Populations of the Philippine animals, from the spotted deer to the  Mindanao moonrat, have been decimated. Insects lost include the  Luzon peacock swallowtail and Milagros’ tiger. Frogs in the forests of Camiguin, Mindoro, Negros, Panay and Polilio are among the amphibians driven almost to the brink of extinction.

Dwarf pygmy goby and kandar are among declining fish species. The Cebu flowerpecker  has  vanished. So has the Isabela oriole, Mindanao bleeding heart, Negros striped babbler  and the white-throated jungle flycatcher.

“If all the (birds) were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit,” the mythical Chief Seattle once wrote. He could have been describing the Philippines.

“If it flies, it dies,” a Negros gun club once bragged.

Oxford University estimates that about 30,000 species slip into extinction yearly. No more than 15 percent have been given scientific names. Yet, their genes spin off into diverse products like anti-cancer medicine.

Plant-derived drugs, for example, earn $40 billion yearly. The first “miracle rice” (IR-8) came from genes of Dee-Geo-woo-gen and Peta, crossed in 1962 at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños.

Genes evolved over the centuries. Many species are “keystones” in interlocking ecosystems. Destroying a keystone triggers a lethal  “domino effect” and wrecks other genes.

“The web of life then unravels, slowly at first, then at ever greater speed,” the late Ubaidullah Khan of the Food and Agriculture Organization said at the Asian Institute of Technology. “These losses close off little understood options for the future of our children. This is genetic forfeiture.”

We are bugged by pork barrel, congested prisons and graft. Structural reforms can correct these problems. Not so with biodiversity loss. It is the irreversible blotting out of unique life forms. No one has yet invented a recall mechanism for obliteration. Extinction is forever.

“The highest priority should be given to reducing the greatest disturbances to planet earth,” says the World Climate Conference’s “precautionary principle.” “Where there are threats of irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

World Environment Day 2011 requires us to think differently. Tomorrow will not be another today. Biodiversity is unlike any issue we have grappled with before.

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