‘...Pacific Islands leaders need to recognise that the preservation of biodiversity and balance needs to be treated with the same kind of seriousness as climate change and sea level rise issues. While the effects of climate change and sea level rise may be more apparent in their physical manifestations, the effect of the destruction of biodiversity is subtle and may not become apparent for several years after a species goes extinct’

In a world ravaged by the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources in the name of economic growth and raising the living standards of the continually burgeoning human population, it is a small wonder the delicate balance of life involving multitudes of living species is under a severe and growing threat almost throughout the world.
The term for the sheer mind-boggling variety of life within a given environment, or more specifically an ecosystem, is biodiversity. In light of the nearly mindless pace of developments in the pursuit of economic growth that is bringing large scale destruction to the habitats of hundreds of living species of every kind in its wake and to focus world’s attention on it, 2010 has been dedicated as the year of biodiversity.
While grim statistics such as tropical forests the size of an entire rugby field being cleared, flattened and encroached every five seconds and the fact that at least a couple of species of living beings are rendered extinct every day have been making the rounds for some time, the problem has always looked extraneous to us here in the Pacific Islands.
Though the Pacific Islands region has been less affected than the more populous, accessible and natural resources rich parts of the world, our view here about the islands environment—                                                       about the pristine purity of our ecosystems, especially the wonderful biodiversity of our littoral environment—has been conditioned and reinforced by the alluring images and messages our tourism industry has used over the years to attract the tourist dollar.
But the publication of a recent scientific report outlining the state of the Pacific Islands region’s biodiversity makes for shocking reading, with the revelation that a big number of living species that have lived, evolved and thrived in the islands environments for millions of years, are now severely threatened with the fear of extinction.
At least this is the view of BirdLife International Pacific Regional Director, Don Stewart. “The region is home to 44 critically endangered bird species, which gives the Pacific the tragic distinction of having the highest number of bird species on the brink of extinction of any region of the world,” Stewart has said.
Biodiversity is often referred to as the web of life and nearly every ancient culture that has existed long before modern scientific knowledge came into being have inculcated a deep respect for living creatures and their environments.
Legends and stories of indigenous peoples from all over the world always have an undercurrent of deep respect for all creatures. In modern parlance, it may well be called respect for biodiversity.
The stories of how interdependent life forms are on each other are legion and the scientific world is continually discovering them. One of the better documented cases is of the now extinct gentle, flightless bird called the dodo, which was hunted out for sport in its only delicate habitat on the island of Mauritius—one not unlike our own islands environment.
The extinction of the dodo was directly responsible for the extinction of a plant species because the plant had developed a dependency on the bird to eat its fruit and excrete the seed in a way that new plants would germinate from the excreted seed—processed as it were by the dodo’s digestive system. The wiping of the dodo put paid to this delicate mechanism and therefore threatened the plant’s existence.
This is just one example of how delicately life depends on a number of factors whose balance can easily and quickly be destroyed by mankind’s artificial and often mindless activities.
There could be many reasons for increasing the threat to the existence of species than the relentless pursuit of economic development dependent on the destruction of the environment because of the exploitation of natural resources.
One of these main reasons is the sudden introduction of invasive species—something that happens even inadvertently because of increased human migration and the vastly increased movement of freight—which inadvertently carries invasive species—across the world.
Examples of this, too, are legion; one of them being the introduction of the marsupial possum from Australia by early settlers. The marsupial possum continues to create havoc worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year to the New Zealand economy.
It also threatens several local species that had no natural predators before the possum came on the scene and therefore have evolved no defences or strategies to preserve themselves from the new predators.
Birds, according to Stewart, have thrived in the islands for thousands of years but are driven towards extinction because of the introduction of invasive species such as rats, cats, dogs, mongoose and snakes, which eat the birds eggs and young.
In addition, the birds’ habitats (the areas where they live), especially the forests, are disappearing at an alarming rate all-over the Pacific.
The United Nations Environment Programme Chief Scientist, Professor Joseph Alcamo has endorsed this view: “These losses are clearly unsustainable since biodiversity makes a key contribution to human well-being and sustainable development,” he said commenting on the study.
The report, published in the internationally esteemed journal “Science”, is the result of a study that looked at the health of the planet over four decades. It shows that since 1970, the world’s animal populations on both land and sea have been reduced by 30 percent; mangroves and sea grass by 20 percent; and the coverage of living coral by 40 percent.
The paper’s lead author, Dr Stuart Butchart said, “Our data show that 2010 will not be the year that biodiversity loss was halted, but it needs to be the year in which we start taking the issue seriously and substantially increase our efforts to take care of what is left of our planet.” 
Quite clearly, Pacific Islands leaders need to recognise that the preservation of biodiversity needs to be treated with the same kind of seriousness as climate change and sea level rise issues. While the effects of climate change and sea level rise may be more apparent in their physical manifestations, the effect of the destruction of biodiversity is subtle and may not become apparent for several years after a species goes extinct. We will have only ourselves to blame if we go the way of the dodo.