‘Genetic bankruptcy’

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

Sen. Miguel Zubiri heads a committee that examines the smuggling of black coral and rare seashells. 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 seven out of 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: 27,000 square kilometers. But that is past tense. Only a sliver of 1 percent remains in “pristine” condition, says Worldwide 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 waters of the Visayas and other points south. They’re only 5 percent of the original legacy.

Why are we surprised?

In 1998, the World Resources Institute (WRI) study “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 cropland. In 1595, forests blanketed 27.5 million hectares here. Today, a bare quarter 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 plus Filipinos. There’ll be 101.6 million of us, probably more, when President Benigno 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 ten countries in the entire world have a situation that is more critical than the Philippines,” IUCNR adds. “(But) most of other countries are significantly bigger (in terms of land mass).”

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

Dwarf pygmy goby to kandar are among declining fish species. The Cebu flowerpecker has vanished. So has the Isabela oriole, Mindanao bleeding-Negros striped-babbler to 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 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 IRRI 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 FAO 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’re bugged by pork barrels, congested prisons to graft. Structural reforms can correct these problems. Not so with biodiversity loss. It is 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 different. Tomorrow will not be another today. Biodiversity is unlike any issue we’ve grappled with before.