Tuesday 24 August 2010

Drivers of Biodiversity Loss

Sometimes, when you ask 5 experts their opinions, you get 7 different view points– we kind of expected this when we conducted research amongst some 37 environmentalists attending the GBOB conference. How wrong we were! There was surprising unanimity. When we enquired about what the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss was, habitat loss ranked first followed by the overexploitation of natural resource with scores reaching 48.65% and 24.32% respectively.  When asked about indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, excessive consumption, 59.46%, emerged as the most important indirect driver followed by population growth, 10.81%. For us the big issue was that climate change hardly figured as a direct driver with a score of 2.70%.  This appears to run counter to several lobbyists who maintain climate change is the main environmental issue of our time. Further research is required!