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English
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CHAPTER 6 SPECIES AND ECOSYSTEMS: RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT
1. Conservation of living natural resources – plants, animals, and micro-organisms. and the non-living elements of the environment on which they depend – is crucial for development. Today, the conservation of wild living resources is on the agenda of governments; nearly 4 per cent of the Earth's land area is managed explicitly to conserve species and ecosystems, and all but a small handful of countries have national parks. The challenge facing nations today is no longer deciding whether conservation is a good idea, but rather how it can be implemented in the national interest and within the means available in each country.
I. THE PROBLEM: CHARACTER AND EXTENT
2. Species and their genetic materials promise to play an expanding role in development, and a powerful economic rationale is emerging to bolster the ethical, aesthetic, and scientific cases for preserving them. The genetic variability and germplasm material of species make contributions to agriculture, medicine, and industry worth many billions of dollars per year.
3. Yet scientists have intensively investigated only one in every 100 of Earth's plant species, and a far smaller proportion of animal species. If nations can ensure the survival of species, the world can look forward to new and improved foods, new drugs and medicines, and new raw materials for industry. This – the scope for species to make a fast-growing contribution to human welfare in myriad forms – is a major justification for expanded efforts to safeguard Earth's millions of species.
4. Equally important are the vital life processes carried out by nature, including stabilization of climate, protection of watersheds and soil, preservation of nurseries and breeding grounds, and so on. Conserving these processes cannot be divorced from conserving the individual species within natural ecosystems. Managing species and ecosystems together is clearly the most rational way to approach the problem. Numerous examples of workable solutions to local problems are available.[1]
5. Species and natural ecosystems make many important contributions to human welfare. Yet these very important resources are seldom being used in Ways that will be able to meet the growing pressures of future high demands for both goods and services that depend upon these natural resources.
- ↑ J. McNeely and K. Miller (eds.), National Parks Conservation and Development: The Role of Protected Areas in Sustaining Society, Proceedings of the World Congress on National Parks (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984).
