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Biodiversity and Organizing for Sustainability in the United States Government

Timothy E. Wirth
United Nations Foundation, 1301 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036

This paper is based on remarks made by Mr. Wirth as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs at the Conference on Nature and Human Society at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, on 30 October 1997.

After a decade of discussion on biodiversity through this Second National Forum on Biodiversity, Nature and Human Society: The Quest for A Sustainable World, it might be useful to look ahead. What do we want to have accomplished by the year 2007?

On October 28, 1997, the US stock market fell dramatically, caught in a tailspin that sent global markets reeling. The Hong Kong market stuttered and gasped, and morning television in the United States quoted overnight market changes. Economies all over Southeast Asia stumbled and fell, and the international financial institutions responded with billions of dollars. The news was on the front page everywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, the broadest fires in recent history were blazing in the Amazon, and the smoke from fires in Indonesia had spread over an area greater than that of the lower 48 states of the United States. El Niño was fingered, creating a convenient mask over the forces actually at the root of these crises. Negotiations for The Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1997) intensified, with greater stakes than any such international conference before. Yet, with few exceptions, those stories were back-page news, when they were covered at all, and certainly no one stepped in with billions of dollars. The contrast was sharp and significant.

Those two sets of events demonstrated the impact of globalization, which is intensifying the relationship between our economies and our environment. Consider the reaction generated when the markets crashed. But did anyone smell the forests burning? Did anyone hear the forests falling? We protect fragile

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economies and prop up failing currencies. But what about fragile ecosystems and failing species?

Certainly, if we are to have any hope of protecting the world's biological richness, we will have to do a much better job of getting people to listen and to understand—to listen to their home, Planet Earth, and to understand the connections between the health of the world's economies and the health of the resources on which those economies rely.

Economists, financiers, businessmen, and bankers will have to begin to recognize the costs hidden in exploiting the seas, the lands, and the air for short-term wealth. They will have to recognize that ecological systems are the very foundation of our society—in science, in agriculture, in social and economic planning. Five essential biological systems—croplands, forests, grasslands, oceans, and fresh-waters—support the world economy. Except for fossil fuels and minerals, they supply all the raw materials for industry and provide all our food:

• Croplands supply food, feed, and an endless array of raw materials for industry, such as fiber and vegetable oils.

• Forests are the source of fuel, lumber, paper, and countless other products and house valuable watersheds that provide drinking water for growing urban areas.

• Grasslands provide meat, milk, leather, and wool.

• Oceans and freshwater produce food for people and resources for industry.

In the language of the business world, you could say that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. But when we pollute, degrade, and irretrievably compromise that ecological capital, we begin to do serious damage to the economy.

With that introduction, let me present a few ideas by focusing on the third Conference on Nature and Human Society, to be held in the year 2007.

Globalization

By 2007, this forum should have a much better understanding of the impacts of globalization. Today, our economists know that we are profoundly remaking international trade and markets. “Globalization and international trade” has become a mantra, almost an ideology, promising a radiant future for us all.

But is there a dark side? Have we looked at other impacts? For example, are globalization and trade between the developed and developing worlds destroying subsistence agriculture? Are we co-opting Third World farmers into production for the international marketplace while their societies are made dependent on imported foods? The social and cultural consequences of this may be very serious.

Earlier this week, we heard that the number of languages spoken around the world has declined from 6,000 to 600 in this century alone. What else are we losing? What crops are gone? What about the knowledge of those crops? What of the indigenous people who carry this knowledge?

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In 2007, we will be asking these questions more openly and aggressively, and the scientific community will have to be prepared to answer them.

Population

If globalization is the first suggestion, certainly population is central as well. In 2007, we will know whether we have dealt with the urgency of the question. It is not a question of what to do, but of openly asking about population pressure. It is not always popular, but it must be done.

The growth of the world's population has slowed, but the base against which that rate applies is greater than ever before. Our planet is populated by the largest generation of youth in human history—and the next generation will be even larger. There are now roughly one billion teenagers in the world—900 million of who are in the developing world.1 Even if average fertility were to fall rapidly to the replacement rate of 2.1, the sheer number of females giving birth over the next several decades will be so large that population will continue to grow rapidly for many years to come. This phenomenon—population momentum—will account for about half of anticipated population growth in the developing world through the year 2100.

At the International Conference on Population and Development, nations of the world agreed—and now must implement—an action plan that endorses a strategy to stabilize population growth by meeting the needs of individuals and addressing the range of factors that influence decisions about family size.

But acting around the world is not enough. We also must focus here at home, with special reference to our own consumption, disproportionate use of resources, and astonishing production of waste.

We must also understand better the concept of carrying capacity—how many of us can the earth sustain, in what lifestyle, and with what expectations? Obviously, population, like globalization, has a profound effect on biodiversity and on the purposes of the Conference on Nature and Human Society.

Persistent Organic Pollutants

Third, I would raise the issue of persistent organic pollutants. At the Department of State, we have begun to explore this issue, and it has become one of our top priorities. We recently hosted an international meeting on land-based sources of marine pollution, and we are starting to focus on how we can affect this important issue.

Theo Colburn, of the World Wildlife Fund, and Diane Dumanowski and Pete Myers, of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, gave us a starting point in this discussion with Our Stolen Future. In 10 years, we will know whether this book is another Silent Spring. I believe that it is and that the research community will be deeply engaged at the next conference. How do toxicants travel? What are the

1 World Population Data Sheet, Population Reference Bureau, 1998.

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impacts? Are we poisoning ourselves? What are the implications for reproductive health?

Rethinking Biodiversity

Fourth, we will have gone a long way toward rethinking biodiversity, and perhaps we will be calling it something new. I'm not sure “ecosystem services” is much better. Maybe “nature's services”?

The point is that we have to tell the story better. Why do we preserve snail darters or kangaroo rats? Why do we study nematodes? How does the web of life fit together? And what does it do for the average citizen of the world?

On other issues, we have learned to tell the story:

• When the Cuyahoga River caught on fire, it became the poster event for the environmental movement.

• Asthma caused people to worry about their children and got us the Clean Air Act.

• Lead and learning were linked, and we removed lead from gasoline.

• Lakes were dying, and we understood acid rain and cleaned up our utilities.

• And maybe we will learn about global warming. Is El Niño the trailer for Climate Change the movie?

I predict that the link of nature's services to the science of biodiversity will become the way to tell the story. The links with economics will give us new tools to become loud messengers. And I can guarantee that until we all do a better job of telling the story, the Endangered Species Act will continue to be under attack and the Biodiversity Treaty will remain unratified for want of a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

One of the signal events of the third Conference on Nature and Human Society will be the awarding of a new prize, awarded for science in service to society. Perhaps we will call it the Ed Wilson Prize for Effective Individual Achievement, for the scientist who did the best job in translating his or her discipline to the public. Or the Peter Raven Award for Institutional Relevance, given to the scientific institution that best used its reach to advance public engagement in the preservation of the natural world.

No matter what the name, the point is this: For too long, those public-spirited scientists who sought to take their science outside the laboratory, to the public, to the television audience—or, Heaven forbid, to the political arena—have been punished. To tell the story, to popularize, to explain has somehow been unscientific; it sullied the profession, and those who did it were suspect and unpromotable. It is imperative that we as a society—and individual scientists—do a better job of rewarding those who translate their science, who bring it to the public's attention, and who foster broad public understanding.

My first tutor in thinking about science was Walter Roberts, a wonderful man and founder of the National Center for Atmospheric Science in Boulder. Walter taught me and others about the commitment of science in service to society, and

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he was right. Science is critical if our global society is going to develop sustainably.

References

Carson R. 1962. Silent spring. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Colburn T, Dumanowski D, Myers P. 1996. Our stolen future. New York NY: Dutton.