Monday 7 September 2015

Analysis: How serious are we about stopping ecosystem loss?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources revealed that 6/7 of marine turtles are at the brink of extinction, aswell as 1/4 mammals. If the Global temperature rises more than 3.5°C around 70% are threatened of living.
These large numbers have come from the Worlds new ways of expansion which has triggered climate change. Many animals are endangered due to ecosystem loss all over the planet. Russia is in fact the country which has deforested the most. They’ve lost a sum of around 300 billion US dollars because of large wildfires in 2009/2010, in Siberia. Many of the people living in Siberia are unaware of certain rules because the area is so vast, because of that the will use whichever resources they need without thinking twice.
Vladimir Putin has received numerous criticism for not doing enough about preserving and funding the Russian forests. In responce, he has promoted saving endangered animals, especially the Amur Tiger, a tiger which only has 540 of its type. But he hasn’t had a direct response to the lost money and habitats.
Aswell as Russia, Brazil being home to the Worlds largest rainforrest, has also had problems maintaining their biodiversity. Deforesteration could ultimately damage up to 60% of the Amazon rainforrest by 2030. This is surprising, considering that 80% of logging in the Amazon rainforrest is illegal. This may seem like a harsh number if we think about how poor people in Brazil, those who don’t live in a city and have a good job, are. But the Amazon rainforrest has lost 750,000 square kilometres (in Brazil) out of its 5,500,000 total. Barack Obama (USA) has stepped in and been negotiating with Dilma Rousseff (Brazil) since 2010. They are due to meet on October 8th this year to discuss new energy expansion in South America and check up on biodiversity and ecosystem loss. 
Moving back to Europe, the UK has stepped it up with preserving their land and sea. New figures show that 25 million hectares of sea and land is protected in the UK, a massive 24 million more than in 1955. And it has rapidly been increased in the sea, with 12 million more hectares being protected from 2010 to 2015. 
The entire United Kingdom is about 24 million hectares of land, and they’re showing promising statistics. 
The EU, although it is not a country, focuses on maintaining biodiversity and has a strategy for 2020. This strategy is very long and complicated, but sums up that they want to restore habitats and bring back animals peace. The whole pdf is linked in my bibliography. They already lose 3% of their GDP each year due to loss of biodiversity, it is a tough bill to pay. 

The World is beginning to learn from it’s mistakes, but every little step comes from every human: not to litter; not to use resources not intended for us and so on. I think the best way to tackle this solution is to offer more jobs in scarce regions where they feel cutting down forests is the best way to money. And opening more schools, hospitals and infrastructures is a big help aswell. We need more Global awareness although there already is a lot, and start doing what the UK has already done: protecting.
Victoria Lisek.

(This is a script for a presentation I had as homework in the subject Global Perspectives.)

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