Government needs to consider public input in formulating biodiversity strategy

The Hong Kong government is currently working on a Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan as part of its obligation to the Convention on Biodiversity. Which seems fine and dandy, until you ask: what does this really mean?

While founded on fieldwork such as finding frogs in muddy marshes, "biodiversity" is too often obscured by the jargon of PowerPoint presentations in cloistered conferences. For example: "Successful management of biodiversity and ecosystem services must be based on multi-scale, multi-sectoral, and multi-stakeholder involvement", to quote from among reams of well-meaning mumbo jumbo.

But does this matter? Isn't it okay to leave biodiversity to besuited conference attendees and greenies who are overly fond of frogs?

Well, it matters a lot. After all, biodiversity spans life as we know it, which includes you and me. Here is E.O. Wilson, a great biologist and one of the most eloquent writers on the subject, telling of the difference it will make if some species are extinguished: "New sources of scientific information will be lost. Vast potential biological wealth will be destroyed. Still undeveloped medicines, crops, pharmaceuticals, timber fibres, pulp, soil-restoring vegetation, petroleum substitutes, and other products and amenities will never come to light."

Though biodiversity is a new-fangled term, coined in 1985, humans have surely long had an intuitive grasp of its meaning. Even our earliest ancestors would have noticed the marked differences between forested lakeshores with abundant plants and animals, and places such as nearby deserts where food and shelter were harder to come by.

Deteriorations in biodiversity would also have attracted attention, even causing severe impacts on human societies. The collapse of Central America's Mayan civilisation, from AD800-900, may have resulted from a succession of droughts. There is evidence that humans living on Easter Island in the Pacific caused so much deforestation that living there became extremely tough, perhaps involving cannibalism. To people such as American scientist Jared Diamond, this is a cautionary tale for what might happen planet-wide if we devastate earth's biodiversity.