Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim, an eminent scientist of Bangladesh and nature lover notes that about 40 per cent of about 44 thousand species of the world are at stake due to climatic and other disasters. Human-induced climate change tends to reduce the genetic diversity of individual species. Again, successful adaptation to climate change may depend to a greater extent on the ability of species to disperse to new areas but this ability is also increasingly impeded by human-induced landscape change. If we can't mitigate and tackle climatic disasters properly, global biotic community will seriously be in danger in future.
The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimates that by the end of this century, climate change will be the main cause of biodiversity loss. But as climate changes, the value of biodiversity for food and agriculture will increase.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that a significant number of species will be at risk of extinction as the global mean temperature increases.
Of particular concerns are relatives of major crops surviving in the wild. For example, research by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research based on distribution models of wild relatives of three staple crops that sustain the poor - peanuts, cowpea and potato - suggests that by 2055, between 16 and 22 percent of wild species will be threatened by extinction.
Climate change also threatens fishery, an important source of income and nutrition for the 200 million poor people with more than 98 percent from developing countries. Impacts of climate change will affect fish diversity and availability in particular. Here, what climate change will bring include higher water temperatures, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, changes in ocean salinity and acidity, more cyclones in some areas, less rainfall in others, thus shifting paterns and in abundance of fish stocks. The species of fish which will be able to adapt the changed aquatic conditions will survive but which will not be able to do so will face extinction.
E.O. Wilson, an advocate of the movement of biodiversity conservation, says, "The one process that will take millions of years to correct the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats caused by human-induced climate change and direct human thoughtless activities even if world wide biodiversity conservation is properly taken and if human induced climate change is stopped even today.
This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us. Globally, species have been disappearing at 50-100 times the natural rate. Based on current trends, an estimated 3400 plants and 5200 animals species including one in eight of world's bird species face extinction (IUCN, 2006). The experts at international level hope that human induced climate change is responsible for much of this huge species extinction. Hopefully, domestication of crops and animals, a fraction of the world's total species of organisms, has saved us from the full consequences of human aggravated climate change on biotic kingdom. Biodiversity represents the very formation of human existence as it is part of our daily lives and livelihoods and constitutes the resources upon which families, communities and whole nation depend. But human induced-climate change and other heedless human actions are eroding this biological capital at an alarming rate. Here an atempt is made to present the existing problems and to suggest some actions in conservation of biodiversity throughout the world.
Many species are disappearing even before they are identified and registered. Because the total number of species is still not completely known. So, a scientific campaign should immediately be launched to identify and enlist all the species of organisms with a view to developing a permanent and authentic global biodiversity database that will be highly useful for conservation policy making both in national and international levels.
Still there is much lack of quantitative data as to the climate change impacts on biodiversity globally - how much biogene, species, and ecosystems are being lost due to climate related disasters? Which species are facing endangeredness and extinction and at which rate and where in particular? How much species are vulnerable to climate change at present and will be in future if climate continues changing at present rate? Regarding this questions/issues scantly information is available, mostly in scatered literature. So, it is now exigent to carry out sufficient scientific researches on global scale to assess the impacts of climate change on global biota.
Freshly developing climate and climate impact models that give a beter understanding of how climate change may affect global biodiversity in order to be beter prepared.
Improving and expanding weather and climate forecasting. Developing climate disaster risk management
Implementation of National Adaptation Programs of Actions on climate change needs to be internationally supported if necessary.
Contingency plans need to cover new and evolving climate-induced risks on biodiversity at both national and international levels.
Land use plans, fisheries, forestry and wetland management policies must all be adjusted well with climate change.
Global concerns such as climate change and loss of biodiversity require concerted efforts among various stakeholders and institutions at local, national and international levels along with close association among other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs).
Awareness raising and communication materials on biodiversity conservation and climate change should be developed and awareness building and information dissemination should be done globally among the responsible ones about biodiversity and the ways to conserve biodiversity under the present stress of climate change through advertisement in mass media, documentary films and other means of propaganda and motivation.
Development of international and national biodiversity conservation strategy and actions plan both at national and international levels taking climate change and other threats to biodiversity into account is a must Hopefully, in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity, different countries of the world have already developed National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). Necessary support-both financial and technical- from the international community should be made if necessary for the sound implementation of NBSAP in the respective country.
Continuous monitoring, assessment and management of impact risks caused by climate change on biotic environment
However both biodiversity and climate change are global issues. Biodiversity is a must for keeping the planet Earth vividly functioning as the only largest ecosystem of the universe. Similarly, climate change will have its impact felt throughout the whole world. So, they both should be treated globally.
Under the present circumstances of climate change and climate change-induced disasters, the future of the floral and faunal kingdom looks very bleak. If it can't be preserved, this world would be a paradise lost, to put it in beter terms, a paradise destroyed. But to save the earth's living kingdom from the impact of climate change, climate change mitigation is urgency. Yet, mitigation can't be only solution here. Because if all-out measures for climate change mitigation are taken strictly throughout the globe even today, the climate change, according to Dr. Atiq Rahman, an eminent climate change expert of IPCC, will have been having its impacts till 2030. So, adaptation strategies are also now a cornerstone. Yet, for long-term biodiversity conservation and its resilience, mitigation campaign is the main and wisely response to climate change.
Because numerous species are still out of man's known world and are disappearing even before they are identified. It is quite impossible to bring all species under man's direct supervision and care. But time is not just ticking. It has almost run out Less than 50 days left world leader are scheduled to meet in the 15th UNFCC in Copenhagen (December 7-18, 2009) for adopting a climate change agreement
In case of formulating effective international measures, there must be clear-cut policies and actions for climate change mitigation giving highest priority to global climate impacts and the promoted or approved measures must be implemented every where legally and morally imperative thinking globally and acting locally. Otherwise, the future will hold us all to account (Concluded)
(Muhammad Selim Hossain is an M. S. student of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Dhaka, a young writer and researcher on environmental and disaster management issue.)
