Maidstone Quakers

Global is local

Barry Gardiner MP on biodiversity (Green Room, Viewpoint 07/05/2009)  abridged

For the past 16 months I have put off upgrading my mobile phone because two years ago a little girl was stung by a jellyfish on a beach in south-west England. Let me elaborate: it is demand for the latest mobile phones that has made the metal coltan so valuable, leading to conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That conflict has caused deforestation, which has s)een a decline in the number of forest mammals. As a result, more people demand more fish as an alternative protein, leading to overfishing of species higher up the food chain. Fishermen, in turn, have shifted their focus to species further down the food chain, reducing their population. This has allowed jellyfish become the lower reaches of the food chain. Hence, a possible reason why large blooms of jellyfish were invading the south coast of England.

Web of life

Every form of life on this planet stands not on its own but is supported by, and supports, other living things. Lose one species and you lose a vital part of some ecosystem. That means you lose not just a plant or an insect but a service: you lose the medicine that comes from that plant; you lose the pollination of crops which that insect provides. As species die, so biodiversity is depleted and with it the ecosystem services that such biodiversity provides. Contributed by Mario Molinari