In 1984 Jarod Diamond synthesised the threats facing biodiversity and famously came up with his “four horsemen of the ecological apocalypse” – 1. Over-exploitation, 2. Introduced species, 3. Habitat destruction and 4. Chains of linked extinctions – with the recent addition of a fifth, 5. Climate change. While these threats are not independent of each other, it can be useful to identify which are the most urgent in order to prioritise conservation actions.
At October’s Conservation Conversation here at Stirling I asked researchers, “What is the top threat to biodiversity?” Most attending the discussion said “habitat loss” or “habitat degradation”. I was surprised that not one person said “climate change”. I grew up in the 1990s as an environmentally aware kid and was inundated with campaigns from my favourite NGOs about the imminent threats of deforestation and large-scale land-use change across the world. However it appears the environmental agenda has moved on, and in the 2010s talk of deforestation and land-use change has been replaced with climate change. Clive Hambler, in a provocative article for ECOS in 2013, argues, “… some NGOs have lost perspective and now obsess with preventing climate changes…” In anticipation of the COP21 climate talks in Paris this November, I set out to understand this a bit more and explore the relationship between habitat loss and climate change as threats to biodiversity.
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