Rich RP biodiversity in grave danger

With 7,107 islands of various shapes and sizes spread over an area of 300,000 square kilometers of sparkling emerald seas, the Philippine archipelago is known as one of the world’s richest territories in biological diversity. It is host to two-thirds of the earth’s biodiversity but a large portion of its flora and fauna are considered endangered.

Global conservationists have identified the Philippines among 34 areas in the world considered as biodiversity hotspots. In fact, it is now considered as "hottest of the hotspots" on a per unit area basis.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo Reyes has tolled the alarm bells. "Conserving our natural heritage of a rich biodiversity is our duty not only to our people and succeeding generations, but also to the entire world," Reyes said.

The UN Earth Summit defines biodiversity as "the totality and variability of all living things on land, in the sea and other aquatic ecosystems among others, including diversity within and between species, and between the ecosystems where the living organisms belong."

In other words, according to Reyes, "biodiversity is the immense richness of the whole of God’s creation. But we might lose this precious gift from God if we do not take immediate action to preserve it for our people and their children, and our children’s children."

In the realm of environmental conservation, a hotspot is an area rich in biodiversity but facing biodiversity loss.

The Philippines is fifth in the world in the number of plant species, fourth in bird endemism (the birds can be found only in the Philippines), and fifth in mammal endemism, according to the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB), a unit of the Department of Environment and Natural Resouces (DENR).

The World Conservation Union estimates that the Philippines has 10,000 to 14,000 species of plants and some 9,000 flowering plants, but 227 of these are in the Red List of Threatened Species.

"We are richer and hotter than the Amazon jungle," Reyes emphasized. "On a unit per area basis, the Philippines is the top mega diversity country. In terms of land area in square kilometers, the Philippines has a bigger total number of species than Brazil."

But out of the country’s 1,137 endemic species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, 52 percent or 592 species are threatened or in danger of being lost due to human action. Overexploitation, pollution, and expansion of settlements have resulted in the degradation of the habitat of these endemic species.

Unfortunately, very few Filipinos know or care about these critical issues of biodiversity. Citing a 2005 Haribon survey, Reyes said that while many Filipinos are more aware of, and give some priority to, waste management and clean air issues, only 17 percent knew about biodiversity.

"Our first task therefore is to let the people know the importance of biodiversity, and then they will think twice about disturbing this valuable environment with careless action," Reyes said.

Millions of years to evolve

The forms of life known to man today took hundreds of millions of years to evolve. They are the foundations of existence: maintaining the earth’s chemical balance, stabilizing climate, protecting watersheds and renewing the soil. In the complex web of interdependence, the extinction of one species threatens other species. A simple illustration is how bees and flowers need each other. The bees drink the nectar of the plant’s flowers, and in the process pollinates or fertilizes the plant so it can bear fruit.

The biological complexity found in animals, plants and marine life are important and varied sources of improving man’s existence, including health, longevity and economic prosperity.

Scientists and researchers are now scouring the oceans and forests in search of genetic materials to enrich and diversify the products of our agriculture, to find new types of medicine and to make industry more efficient and productive. A snail which lives in the dark bottom of the Visayan Sea, for instance, was recently found to produce a substance that is far more effective and safer to use in inducing insensitivity to pain than the current anesthetic drug.

"Biodiversity is vital to sustain life," Reyes observes. "Hence, it is essential that the local and national governments, as well as our relevant business corporations and non-government organizations, must integrate biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of biological resources in their plans and programs."

Corollary to this, the DENR chief urged the private sector to employ environmentally sound practices in their activities and include biodiversity conservation as part of their program of corporate social and environmental responsibility.

"Our natural heritage of plant and animal species is one of the world’s richest, but it is also the most endangered by human action and other factors," Reyes declared.

He pointed out that most of these species of living organisms are endemic or found only in the Philippines. These range from the most colorful fishes to the most fascinating flowering plants, the rarest forest birds and animals such as amphibians and reptiles.

Of the major taxonomical groupings of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the Philippines has a total of more than 1,137 endemic species, of which 592 or 52 percent are threatened species.

Under the mammal category, where the popular but rare species of dolphins, whales and dugongs belong, more than half or 52 percent are threatened by habitat degradation such as pollution and expansion of settlements, and over-fishing.

Scientists recently disclosed that the Philippines is home to an amazingly high variety of marine life. The Verde Island Passage located between Batangas and Mindoro Island was found to have the richest concentration of marine life in the world. It has been tagged as the "center of the center of marine shore fish biodiversity"

Several species of the world’s largest and rarest flower, the Rafflesia, are found in the Philippines. These, too, are being threatened by extinction, especially if the depletion of the country’s rainforests through logging, mining and land conversion is not stopped.

One of the Rafflesia species in the Philippines, the schadenbergiana, was last seen in Mt. Apo in Mindanao in the late 1800s. It was never seen again and is now probably extinct.

Citing figures from the PAWB, Reyes said "we have 10,000 to 14,000 species of plants, 9,000 flowering plants, but 227 of these are in the Red List of Threatened Species."

The Philippines is one of only 18 mega-diverse countries that collectively make up two thirds of the world’s biodiversity, or 70 to 80 percent of all the known plant and animal species.

"We cannot live in one of the world’s richest natural environments and neglect our responsibility to protect and conserve it. That would be an unforgivable betrayal of the interests of our people and future generations," Reyes said.

Biodiversity at risk

We live at a time of rapid environmental changes. Changes that could be divided into two major categories: One is the deterioration of the physical environment, from toxic pollution to ozone depletion, global warming due to greenhouse gases emission and so on. The second category is the loss of biological diversity or biodiversity.

Loss of biodiversity is unique in three ways. First, it is irreversible. When a species goes extinct, all its heredity is lost forever. Second, humanity loses the opportunity to gain enormous benefits in scientific knowledge. The third unique feature of biodiversity is that there is a distinct paucity in our understanding of its nature in all of its variety.

The rate of biodiversity loss in the Philippines is so alarming that it is considered one of the "hottest of the hotspots" accounting for 70 to 80 percent of the world’s endangered species.

Habitat loss is by far the most potent threat to biodiversity. Philippine forests that are hosts to most of the known species of flora and fauna, have been degraded, resulting largely from activities that accelerate the rate of species extinctions. The remaining forest cover of the country is only around seven million hectares from an estimated 27.5 million ha. in the 1500s. The current removal rate of tropical forests is somewhere between one and two percent of cover each year.

A lot of benefits from biodiversity will remain unaccounted and future generations will have to wait millions of years to repair what we have carelessly done in the living world in our lifetime, Reyes noted. These are what the economists call opportunity costs, and they are enormous because we haven’t even identified the vast majority of species out there that could produce limitless benefits to mankind, he added.