By Dr Forkan Ali

The Earth we live on is moving steadily towards danger. Natural disasters may strike harder, and even its fitness for human habitation has been called into question. A conservationist group has voiced just such fears. A recent report by the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network states that between 1970 and 2024, a span the report describes as four and a half decades, the Earth's biodiversity collapsed drastically. Of at least 3,309 species of animals, 1,235 have disappeared in that time, a rate of 37 per cent. At the current annual rate of loss, it is estimated that 51 per cent of biodiversity will be gone by 2030, which is truly worrying.

The report says the severe decline in biodiversity could bring natural disasters, affecting farmland, forests and marine resources, and consequently raising the prices of food, goods, water and fuel. In the words of WWF's international director general, to save the Earth and its living things from that terrible outcome we must change the way we live and refrain from activities that threaten biodiversity.

Dr Van Zarlo, a policymaker with the same group's Scotland branch, said the media make a great fuss about the world's economic crisis but say little about biodiversity, although the root of that crisis is the loss of global balance, whose core is the continuing decline of biodiversity. Attention should go to the root, he said; otherwise, whatever else is done, biodiversity cannot be saved.

Philip Albert, head of a London-based environmental organisation called WPF, made the same point. In his view, people must come forward first to protect biodiversity because they are at the root of its destruction. In pursuit of more comfortable lives, humans reach into the living world, species after species becomes endangered, and in time humans themselves end up at risk.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its annual climate report that last year's average annual temperature was 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Glaciers and sea ice are melting rapidly, and sea levels have reached new highs. A Reuters report said record greenhouse gases made 2024 the warmest year in history, with extensive loss of glaciers and sea ice and a significant rise in sea level. The UN weather agency released the information on 19 March.

According to the WMO, sea levels rose by an average of 4.7 millimetres a year from 2015 to 2024, compared with 2.1 millimetres a year from 1993 to 2002. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit average warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. June 2024 was the world's hottest June since records began, and because of the record temperatures that month saw more long heatwaves, droughts, extreme rainfall, floods and cyclones in various countries than the June of other years.

The main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Despite pledges to curb global warming, most developed and rich countries have so far failed to cut emissions, so the world's temperature has been rising for decades. Global warming and the resulting natural disasters and incurable diseases are stages of that process. Morris Ases, executive head of Life, a US-based conservation organisation, took an even harder line: unless people give up consumerist lifestyles, he said, the destruction of biodiversity cannot be stopped.

Climate change has begun to hit Bangladesh hard too. Rivers are disappearing, biodiversity is being lost, and fish, animals and birds are dying out. Some 40 species of native fish and 20 species of birds have already disappeared. Over the past 40 years many rivers, canals and beels have vanished from the map, and several thousand acres of forest have been encroached upon and cleared of trees. Lawsuits to recover forest land have not succeeded, and forest department officials are alleged to have colluded in tree felling.

According to biologists' research, 20 bird species have died out because of weather and climate change, notably vultures, kites, doves, horial (green pigeons), kingfishers, woodpeckers, spotted doves, dahuk (white-breasted waterhens), cormorants, bogila, kana bogila, kana kuhu, owls and hutum pecha (eagle owls). Reptile-type animals such as the gui shap (monitor lizard), bezi and neul have also died out.

Tasty native freshwater fish that have died out include nandai, bheda, chela, kania, rakhla, pabda, koi, mrigel, kalibaus, shol, baim, phasa, kholisha, bacha, baija, chapila, puti, sarputi, kakila, air and foli. Their place has been taken by foreign species such as silver carp, Japanese rui, Thai puti and Thai koi, while pond-farmed pangas and Thai chapila have replaced the vanished river pangas.

The Barind region has been hit hardest by climate change. Biologists' research says the country's biodiversity is being lost because rivers, canals and beels are disappearing and countless ponds and water bodies in towns, ports and villages are being filled for housing and farmland. Map data show that over the past 40 years several thousand large and small ponds in various districts have been filled in by influential land grabbers to build houses and farmland. The heavy use of fertiliser and pesticides in the hope of higher yields is also wiping out animals, birds and fish.

With river flows shrinking, inland rivers such as the Karatoya, Ichamati, Baral, Gumani, Atrai, Doibhanga, Hurasagar, Buri Teesta, Doijan, Naotara, Charar Khora, Burikora, Deonari, Kharkharia, Jamuneshwari, Chikli, Mahananda and Chhoto Jamuna vanished from the map long ago; looking at those places now, you would not think a flowing river was ever there. Water Development Board surveys show that the Padma, Jamuna, Brahmaputra, Teesta and other rivers have lost their natural course. Over the past 40 years 25 to 30 feet of sand has built up on their beds, reducing their depth, and three and a half lakh tonnes of sand settle on the riverbeds every monsoon. These rivers are dry for nine months of the year, and as the main rivers silt up, the flow of inland rivers has stopped. Now is the time for us and the world to be alert.

The writer is a researcher and former principal.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.