The Great Debate
Added to website: 04 October 2002
Coral reefs go head-to-head with rainforests, wetlands, mountains and polar regions in hot air debate for £10 million.
A fictitious balloon crammed with five eminent scientists and conservationists, including Coral Cay Conservation’s Peter Raines, took flight at the Royal Geographical Society on 17th October during the annual Earthwatch Balloon Debate.
Each expert had barely ten minutes to convince a packed audience of nearly 600 members of the public that their chosen habitat should receive a handy (albeit imaginary) £10 million worth of conservation funding. By the end of the evening, only one expert remained - the others having been jettisoned from the balloon by two rounds of vigorous voting.
Wetlands
Representing wetlands, Dr Mark Avery, The RSPB’s Director of Conservation, was the first to present his case for staying in the balloon. “If you vote for me,” began Dr Avery, “We’ll take this £10 million to world leaders and ask them to match it with £10 billion.” According to the life-long birder (who is also one of the key players behind the UK Red Data List for birds), the only way we’ll convince decision makers to take action is by showing them that wetlands are economically valuable. “Pretty pictures won’t persuade them,” said Dr Avery who claimed that wetlands provide a staggering $14.9 trillion of ‘ecosystem services’ to the planet.
He also cited the role of wetlands in alleviating flooding, cleaning up pollutants, recharging aquifers, maintaining river levels and storing carbon. “Floodplain wetlands, such as the Nile Valley, were also the cradle of civilisation,” he mused before returning emphatically to the main thrust of his argument - that these places are incredibly valuable economically. “Leave me in the balloon,” pleaded the man from the RSPB, “And we can get an even bigger load of money to save wetlands and have some left over for the other habitats.”
Polar regions
So, what price the polar regions? Professor Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), was next up. But rather than preach the dollar-value of the poles, he began with a somewhat bleak prophecy. “We know least about the problems [facing polar regions] - and the most to lose,” said the Professor, who is head of a major BAS programme on science called Life at the Edge: Stresses and Thresholds which is investigating adaptation of organisms at the ends of the earth. He went on to list climate change, pollution, overfishing, oil exploration and unregulated tourism as major threats to Antarctica - “the highest, driest, windiest and coldest place on earth.”
Professor Peck’s research has recorded rapid temperature rises in Antarctica. As a result, ecosystems are changing fast and species are unable to cope. Animals in Antarctica have less ability to adapt and evolve, he explained. “They are more fragile in the face of change than animals anywhere else.” Part of the reason for this is due to slow breeding cycles and the narrow range of temperature tolerance that most species have.
Scientific charts and complex diagrams may have taken the edge off Professor Peck’s cause, but he nonetheless came through with some astounding facts. Did you know, for example, that Antarctica was home to the world’s second most common mammal (the crab eater seal, which numbers 10-15 million), as well as some of the rarest (some species of beaked whale have only been seen by one person)?
Mountains
Professor Georg Grabherr of the University of Vienna relied on a slow, deliberate and point-of-fact delivery for his chosen habitat of mountains. “Mountains occur everywhere,” admitted the Professor, shrugging as if to imply ‘need I say more?’. “Mountains host biodiversity, not just beauty.” Like an avalanche, starting slowly but rapidly gaining impetus, Professor Grabherr began embellishing his plea with remarkable statistics on endemicity and biodiversity. “Two thousand flowering plants grow above the tree line on Europe’s mountains,” he explained “These mountains cover just 3% of Europe, yet that’s more species than the entire flora of the UK.”
The professor, who helped establish the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, went on to highlight mountains ‘as individuals, engines of evolution and the world’s water towers.’ Heady stuff, but the most dramatic claim from the quiet spoken professor from Austria was that half of humanity depended on mountains. Like Professor Peck, our man from the frozen south, Professor Crabherr picked out climate change as the most significant threat. He explained that with current trends in climate change, isolated montane plants will be forced to migrate higher and higher up mountains until they literally have nowhere left to go. “£10 million,” concluded the professor. “We need it to convince people, to buy land and to mitigate global warming.”
Coral Reefs
Academic toffs might have written off Peter Raines, founder and managing director of Coral Cay Conservation, even before he took to the stage to present the case for coral reefs. But despite being the only candidate without Prof. or Dr. before his name, Raines quickly rattled off a dozen weighty reasons why the ‘rainforests of the seas’ should clinch the vote. He cited their monetary value (some $375 billion a year), their biodiversity (home to a third of all known fish), their role in cancer research (over half of which relies on reef organisms) and their role as carbon sinks and solar-powered sea defences. Running with this tide of compelling facts and figures, Raines flicked through a procession of slides showing Coral Cay volunteers in various stages of ‘decline’ - a vivid and hilarious metaphor for the deterioration of coral reefs worldwide.
But Raines also spelled out a stark ‘naked truth’ - millions of people worldwide depend on coral reefs for such basics as food and livelihood. He said that one square kilometre of coral reef could provide 30 tonnes of fishery products - enough to feed 600 people for a year. In addition, scuba diving generates tourism revenue.
Raines who is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of Biology, described the threats facing reefs, from deforestation and the resultant smothering sedimentation (“Corals are fussy things - they don’t tolerate this.”) to the over-exploitation of reef sharks for shark fin soup (“Sharks use their fins to store urea, so basically you’ll be paying $100 for a bowl of shark piss.”), Raines, like those before him, targeted climate change as a significant potential impact. Recent El Nino events, he explained, have demonstrated how sea level warming can destroy large swathes of coral reefs. “But if they’re healthy and fit,” he said, “Coral reefs can bounce back.”
But more than anything, Peter Raines’ appeal was on behalf of people living in reef areas as much as for the reefs themselves. “There’s a ‘Green Renaissance’ going on,” he said. “Global communities are getting together and empowering themselves. With £10 million we can help protect coral reefs through community-based conservation. We need to relearn the lessons we’ve lost and give kids a future by empowering them through wisdom and knowledge.”
Rainforest
Passionate stuff. But would it be enough to tip rainforests from the balloon? How would Dr Jon Lovett, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management at the University of York, present the habitat that, after more than two decades of high-profile campaigning and publicity, is at the forefront of most people’s minds when it comes to global issues of conservation?
Dr Lovett, who has conducted most of his fieldwork in Tanzania where he worked on the WWF Tropical Forests and Primates Programme, began with a list of forest facts. Over a third of the world’s population inhabits the tropics; rainforests are the lungs of the world; they effect water cycling; they are home to remarkable culture; they are a natural pharmacy and they are biodiverse ecosystems. And yet, over 40,000 square miles is lost or degraded each year.
“£10 million sounds like a big sum of money,” said Dr Lovett. “But it’s not very much.” To put the figure in perspective he claimed that some £3 billion is spent on agricultural subsidies in the UK each year. The Dr said it was therefore essential to determine priorities. “Seventeen of the world’s twenty biodiversity hotspots are in tropical rainforests,” he explained. “And the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania are the hottest of the hottest.”
Dr Lovett went on to outline how he would spend the £10 million in this one precious rainforest area which is home to the African violet (a species with huge pharmaceutical importance). He also tried to widen the scope of his cause, however, by suggesting that by conserving this area of rainforest you would also benefit related ecosystems, including wetlands, coral reefs and mountains. Spend wisely was Dr Lovett’s motto. “I don’t believe in placing a value on things,” he said. “Biodiversity has a right to exist. Vote with your heart.”
Results
While the chief executive of Earthwatch provided a Blind Date ‘Here’s Graham…’ style round-up of the five causes, the audience made their first vote. Wetlands, polar regions, mountains, coral reefs or rainforests. Tick one. A few minutes later the 500-odd votes had been counted. Apparently it was close. But polar regions and wetlands were out - joint last. In 3rd place came mountains - also tossed from the balloon. That left rainforests and coral reefs to go head-to-head. Both candidates had a couple of minutes to provide a final summing-up. Peter Raines returned to his theme of local people. “It’s not so much the biodiversity,” he said. “But the local people who rely on it. £10 million could empower local people - we need to spend the money on education.” Dr Lovett re-emphasised his biodiversity hotspot in Tanzania and what £10 million could do for the local forest conservation group.
The Winner
It was close. When it came to the second and final vote, only 30 votes separated rainforests from coral reefs. While everyone waited for the winner to be announced there must have been many who felt uneasy about jettisoning the Himalayas, Antarctica or the great wetlands of the Panatanal. But no matter how valuable, vulnerable or interdependent the five ecosystems are, there could be only one winner. There could be only coral reefs. Well done Mr Raines!
- by Will Gray
