Of the estimated 8 million animal, fungi and plant species on our planet, only a fraction have been scientifically documented, according to the international biodiversity council IPBES. Throughout Earth’s history, species have lived, thrived and ultimately died out. But never before has so much biodiversity disappeared in such a short space of time.

Yet according to scientists, the world may lose nearly 1 million species by 2030, with one species already becoming extinct every 10 minutes. This is catastrophic because a world that lacks diversity is a dangerous place for all species, including humans.

Industrial agriculture, deforestation, overfishing, pollution, the spread of invasive species and soil sealing to make way for infrastructure are all contributing to an extinction rate that’s now 1,000 times higher than it would be without humans around.

 Between 1970 and 2014, the global population of vertebrates declined by 60%, while in South and Central America, that figure is almost 90%. The number of species living in freshwater environments decreased by 83% during the same period. 

Will the global community succeed in halting the extinction crisis?

A recent report from the Leibniz Research Network for Biodiversity stressed how the great variety of species on our planet’s is essential to just about every aspect of human life. “Whether it is the air we breathe, clean drinking water, food or clothing, fuel, building materials or medications — our life, our health, our nutrition and well-being all depend on the great diversity of resources that nature provides us with,” it stated. 

More than two-thirds of all crops worldwide rely upon natural pollinators such as insects. Without them, our food supply is likely to become less secure. Yet a third of all insect species worldwide are already facing extinction. 

Losing biodiversity could also spell disaster for the medical sector, as many pharmaceuticals — including close to 70% of cancer treatments — are derived from nature.

“The knowledge of 3.5 billion years of natural evolution is stored in biological diversity,” said Klement Tockner, director of Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, a group based in Frankfurt, Germany. “The progressive decline of our ecological capital poses the greatest threat to all of humanity — because once it’s lost, it’s lost forever.” 

 Ecosystems are the interaction of different species that depend on one another for survival and their environment. Losses within a single genus can have repercussions through the entire ecosystem — including on humans. 

Johannes Vogel, director of the Berlin Museum of Natural History, explained,  “Frogs are currently dying out worldwide because of a fungus spreading due to climate change,” he said. “Frogs eat a lot of mosquito larvae for example, so there will be more mosquitoes in the future — and mosquitoes cause more deaths globally than any other organism.”

As early as 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro adopted the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  Under the convention, signatory countries committed to promoting sustainable economies that operate within our planet’s ecological limits. Further conferences and agreements followed. But so far, hardly any of the aims set out three decades ago have been achieved. The problem is all individual nations had to set their own conservation targets, but many of these have amounted to nothing more than declarations of intent. Particularly in industrialized nations, very few effective measures have been implemented. 

“While we can agree to work toward the 1.5 degrees Celsius target on the climate crisis — the fight against the crisis of nature is much more complex,” said Nicola Uhde, biodiversity policy expert at German environmental NGO BUND. “It cannot easily be reduced to a buzzword or standard. Awareness of the value of nature often only emerges with its loss,” she added.

Dying frogs rarely make the headlines. Yet the climate and biodiversity crises are intertwined. Rising temperatures and changing climatic conditions are driving some species to extinction. And as forests are cleared and wetlands drained, not only do the species they support vanish, essential carbon sinks are also lost, which in turn increases global warming. This is why both crises need to be tackled together.

′Biodiversity loss is humanity′s greatest threat′ | Global Ideas | DW | 21.06.2022

 According to the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR, more than 100 million men, women and children are currently displaced 

 New research published on Tuesday shows that U.S. corporate price markups and profits surged to their highest levels since the 1950s last year. Authored by Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani of the Roosevelt Institute, the analysis finds that markups—the difference between the actual cost of a good or service and the selling price—”were both the highest level on record and the largest one-year increase” in 2021.

“How high companies can increase their sales up and above their costs… matters for the economy more generally because these markups distribute economic gains from workers and consumers to firms and shareholders,” said Lusiani. “This is especially the case when almost 100% of these firms’ earnings derived from markups are distributed upward to shareholders rather than retained and reinvested.”

Study Shows Excess Corporate Profits in the US Have Become ‘Widespread’ (commondreams.org)

 Looking to nature for inspiration, drug research, genetically modified crops or other products is nothing new — research groups and major corporations do it all the time. But discoveries based on traditional Indigenous knowledge or the wealth of biodiversity in developing countries can end up being exported and patented without proper credit or compensation, in what’s as biopiracy.

The practice is rooted in history. Colonizers like Spain, the United Kingdom and other global empires frequently took and profited from the natural resources of the regions they occupied, trading in products like coffee, cotton, tea, pepper and rubber.

Today, richer states often exploit the natural resources of poorer nations for medical, agricultural or industrial purposes. Though some protections have been in place for decades — including a World Trade Organization agreement that covers intellectual property rights for varieties of plants and animals — such protections aren’t always effective. Such was in the case in the decade-long fight against a patent granted to a US multinational on an antifungal product derived from the neem tree, the use of which has long been a traditional part of Indian medicinal knowledge. 

Another example is when American cosmetics firm Mary Kay tried to patent an ingredient from the Kakadu plum — a native Australian fruit which can sell for up to 40 Australian dollars ($27, €26) per kilogram — in its skincare line. The move would have shut out Indigenous producers from the Australian market, people who have long benefited from the plum’s medicinal qualities.

In the case of French Guiana,French researchers, based on interviews with Indigenous groups in 2005, identified — and patented — a component in Quassia amara, a traditional medicinal plant with anti-malarial properties. Though the IRD research group eventually agreed to share any potential scientific and economic benefits, it still retains the patent granted by the European Patent Agency in 2015, despite an appeal.

“This patent is a flagrant case of biopiracy. At no time were the six Indigenous communities of French Guiana consulted,” said Michele Rivasi, a French member of the European Parliament with the Greens/European Free Alliance. “This decision jeopardizes the use of traditional remedies, as the IRD can prohibit the use of these remedies by the communities that discovered them.”

How can developing countries confront biopiracy? | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 20.06.2022

 A sombre warning comes from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) that further food ration cuts are imminent for refugees as humanitarian needs multiply around the world while funding struggles to keep pace. The WFP has already been forced to significantly reduce rations to refugees across its operations.

“As global hunger soars way beyond the resources available to feed all the families who desperately need WFP’s help, we are being forced to make the heart breaking decision to cut food rations for refugees who rely on us for their survival,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “Without urgent new funds to support refugees – one of the world’s most vulnerable and forgotten groups of people – many facing starvation will be forced to pay with their lives.”

Ration reductions of up to 50 percent are affecting three-quarters of all refugees supported by WFP in Eastern Africa. Refugees living in Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda are the most affected. Severe funding constraints in West Africa, where hunger has reached a record high in a decade, have forced WFP to significantly reduce rations for refugees living in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. WFP assists on average 500,000 refugees in Southern Africa annually. Resourcing remains insufficient to meet the very basic needs of refugee households and imminent disruptions are expected in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

WFP is having to prioritize assistance to ensure that vital food reaches the most vulnerable families first. These painful decisions very often leave refugees without support at a time where food assistance is the difference between life and death. 67 percent of refugees and asylum seekers originated from countries with food crises in 2021. This, coupled with devastating conflict and climate extremes, is hitting refugees the hardest. In 2021, WFP assisted nearly 10 million refugees globally.

WFP is forced to institute ration reductions in order to stretch limited resources, where this year saw an additional 6 million refugee movements from Ukraine. Responding to the crisis, WFP in Moldova has delivered nearly 475,000 hot meals to families affected by the conflict in across 31 different localities.

Escalating needs, rising hunger: refugees caught in the eye of the perfect storm – World | ReliefWeb

Each year the media names “The Most Dangerous Man In The World.” Putin is currently cast as the nastiest despot.

Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be the lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity are possible under capitalism has again been shattered. The Yugoslavian civil wars in the Balkans are long forgotten by the media.

Although we are not pacifists (we would countenance fighting should a pro-capitalist minority take up arms to try to prevent the democratic establishment of socialism) we say there is no such thing as a “just war”. Wars are fought over markets, raw material sources, trade routes and strategic spheres of influence. The present war in Ukraine is no different, conducted under the disguise of “national self-determination”. With NATO’s historic enemy Russia seen to be on its knees, it revived certain nations to seek eastwards economic expansion.

The result, however, has not been stability. Quite the reverse, but a miscalculation of Russia’s determination to defend its self-interests.

 Blinded by the hype on their TV screens, large numbers of decent people are weeping for the oppressed Ukrainians and cheering them on as Russia drops its bombs on towns and villages. Because most people are decent and hate to see injustice against the underdogs so they are sucked into the drama of war. But there are many other defenceless and vulnerable communities whose plight and suffering are not shown on the news.

There are numerous other refugees in addition to the Ukrainian exodus. Where are the calls from those  humanitarians to send aid to these refugees and to end the fighting? Conduct a simple experiment. Go on to the streets of New York or  London and ask people what they think about the slaughter of the people in the Sahel. Most will never have heard about the conflicts there.  The media have forgotten to tell them about that atrocities being carried out in the region. Reports of the massacres have not made it on to  CNN or Fox, perhaps because the reporters are too busy congratulating the West upon its campaign to assist Ukraine. . What a terrific diversion from thinking about the poverty of life under the profit system it is for wage slaves to be presented with 24-hour live coverage of Biden’s Heroes.

Faced with this latest manifestation of capitalist barbarity and cynicism we once again place on record our abhorrence of all war and call upon workers everywhere to unite to bring the war-prone capitalist system to a speedy end. Those  who own and control the world—the CEOs of USA Inc and UK Plc—are ruthless, exploitative thieves whose primary interest is in the fast buck and protecting what they imagine their interests to be. The capitalists have never gone to war to promote justice and they never will. Indeed, the notion that justice can be furthered by violence can only make sense when you have a social system that is rooted in violence and plunder. 

There is no glory in battle. 

 “True socialists cannot at the same time be nationalists, militarists and capitalist ‘patriots.’ . . . The self-called socialists who are nationalists first and who set the ‘fatherland’ of their masters above the whole earth and above all the workers of the world are not socialists at all but either mild and harmless capitalist reformers and stool pigeons or traitors to the cause.” – Eugene Debs

Eugene V. Debs: Socialist Internationalism Versus Capitalist Nationalism (jacobin.com)

 Black Americans lost 90% of their lands across the United States during the 20th century, government figures show, due to factors such as predatory developers.

White people own 98% of U.S. farmland.

Black farming projects look to recoup historical U.S. land losses (trust.org)

 The Rich Prevail Over the Poor

The 164-member World Trade Organization (WTO) has implicitly rubber-stamped the widely-condemned policy of “vaccine apartheid” which has discriminated against the world’s poorer nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, depriving them of any wide-ranging intellectual property rights.

Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said at the conclusion of the WTO’s ministerial meeting last week: “The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful. The European Union has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The UK and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the US has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement.”

 This so-called compromise, he argued, largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances. And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines.Lawson added, “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and treatments for everyone, everywhere. The EU, UK, US, and Switzerland blocked that text.”

“Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives.”

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ explained that rich countries had acted to protect the monopolies of big pharmaceutical companies to determine production levels of pandemic-ending medicines.

In doing so, he said “they are not only causing deaths in developing countries, they are causing deaths in their own countries’ too. It’s not Northern interests vs Southern interests. It’s a handful of oligarchs who cannot share vs 8 billion people who want to be safe from pandemics.”

“Almost everyone in every country in the world”, he said, “would be better off if big pharmaceutical companies made slightly less obscene profits so that enough doses of pandemic-ending medicines could be made by multiple producers across the world to reach everyone who needs them on time.”

“The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the rot of the system of monopolies over production of vital medicines. Everyone can see it, and it will fall. How quickly it falls is the only question left. People are organizing nationally and internationally and they won’t let this pass again,” Phillips declared.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), said, “unequal access to vaccines is a global scandal that flies in the face of the economic, social and technological progress we claim to have made as humanity”. He pointed out that CSOs around the world have long called for equity in health care and an end to excessive profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of people’s well-being.

The Battle for Covid-19 Vaccines: the Rich Prevail Over the Poor | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

“Ethical” investing is one of the fastest-growing areas of finance. Corporations worldwide are backing projects to plant or protect carbon-absorbing trees which weighs up a company’s commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

Some environmentalists, however, argue that such efforts are often just cases of “greenwashing” – a way for companies to look like they are taking action to curb climate change without actually cutting their own planet-heating emissions.

“Funding for communities is not bad, but that doesn’t make up for the negative impact that the company may be having on the environment,” said Gustavo Pinheiro, a coordinator at the Institute for Climate and Society, a Brazilian philanthropic organization.

But the current ESG wave means many corporations are investing in forest protection as a way to buy external goodwill, instead of using the money to make internal changes to cut their carbon emissions, said Daniela Teston, Brazil’s corporate engagement manager for green group WWF.

“Sometimes a company supports a specific project and communicates that investment to the public as if it were a part of its strategy in terms of social-environmental conservation,” Teston said. Instead, companies should take “a broader look at concrete actions that are not focused on small projects,” she added.

In Brazil between January and March this year, tree loss in the Amazon rose 64% from a year ago to 941 sq km (363 square miles).

Can ethical investment help protect the Amazon rainforest? (trust.org)