Response 8

Continuing the section on biodiversity and ecosystem services, one of this previous week’s readings was the MEA 2005 Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Biodiversity Synthesis. Like the section we had read at the beginning of the semester, the Biodiversity Synthesis made many points geared towards convincing readers that environmental action was economically and politically important. However, with that previous section I felt like I had already had some prior knowledge to the arguments made. Prior to reading the Biodiversity Synthesis, I had little to base any of my own arguments for protecting biodiversity than it’s intrinsic and spiritual importance. I think one of the most crucial points made in the synthesis was the importance of biodiversity to the poorer people of the world.

The idea that the mass production of select, cheap food species as being detrimental to the poor I feel is counter intuitive at first. However, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the author shows that its effects are not only felt abroad. The farmers of cheap corn in the Mid-West are constantly fighting an uphill battle against (what the author describes as) seemingly perverted economic policies and patterns. If what could be considered the backbone of the American food industry is suffering, then imagine the livelihoods of those who are only paid to till the ground by the literal fruits of their labors (i.e. hunter gatherers who rely on forests for food, only to have their land succumb to illegal logging or slash and burn clearing for farming).

The plight of the two communities in the film “Milking the Rhino” echoed this problem. Both communities herded cattle (typically considered a controlled agrarian activity), their welfare depending directly upon the quality of the land much. The loss of local species was blamed upon colonization, leading to the degradation of quality of life described in the Biodiversity Synthesis. After watching the film, I cannot decide if the direct nature of the communities’ efforts at conservation were meant to be portrayed as a potential, grass roots solution to biodiversity loss, or to demonstrate the sheer scale of the problem by insinuating that the issue was too great for them to solve. After all, the ruinous length of the dry season could be blamed on global warming, a situation these people have little power in affecting but which placed heavy stress on their goal to conserve local wildlife.