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Will the U.S. Ever Get Serious About the Biodiversity Crisis?

Twenty years ago at the Rio Earth Summit, 150 countries signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was meant to lay out guidelines, based on the U.N.‘s Agenda 21, for sustainable development and the protection of the world’s valuable...

Twenty years ago at the Rio Earth Summit, 150 countries signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was meant to lay out guidelines, based on the U.N.‘s Agenda 21, for sustainable development and the protection of the world’s valuable biodiversity. Since then, nearly every measure of ecosystem health and biodiversity worldwide have declined. While that doesn’t mean CBD was a total failure, the fact remains that extinctions, habitat loss, the spread of invasive species, and the human population are all up.

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The CBD remains as the only worldwide framework to help protect biodiversity, but it’s been rendered largely toothless by the absence of a major party. 193 nation-states worldwide are party to the agreement, while only four aren’t: Andorra, South Sudan, the Vatican, and (of course) the United States. It’s clear that regulation, whether it’s the CBD or something new, needs to become more focused and more stringent to have any effect on protecting biodiversity. It’s also clear that big business in the U.S. wants nothing to do with anything like that. William J Snape III, senior counsel for the Center of Biological Diversity in Arizona, asked why the U.S. doesn’t demand change in an essay I quite liked:

Biodiversity is literally the canary in the coal mine, our scientific and ethical measurement of overall environmental health. The Convention possesses diverse tools to push its nation-state members to make sustainability commitments on behalf of biodiversity. The US has not yet made any commitments under the CBD, despite a majority of the US Senate in favour of ratification. Maybe the American voters will reject the viewpoint expressed by presidential candidate Mitt Romney that US leadership is not about “rising ocean levels or healing the planet.” Maybe the current US president, if re-elected, will finally implement the domestic Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act so as to effectuate real greenhouse reductions and responses. Maybe the CBD Secretariat will draw dramatic attention to the rapidly melting Arctic ecosystem, which if left unchecked will not only mean the demise of polar bears, whales, seals and almost infinite fishing resources, but will also alter global weather and food production in ways we can scarcely imagine.

Snape discusses how regulations like the CBD could easily fit in with American democratic ideals; better yet, because of clout on the world stage, we could probably vet the whole process to make sure we’re not blindly following the recommendations of the U.N., as some folks worry about. But political grandstanding and paranoid handwringing over some insane New World Order theory ignore what we really should be worried about: All signs point to the quickening collapse of our ecosystems worldwide, and now matter how much we boast that humans rule the world, we won’t be worth much when our environment breaks down.

Image via Joel Sartore

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.