‘Lack of awareness, weak government policies endanger biodiversity’

Following neglect of biodiversity, a conservation group – Lekki Urban Forest Animal Sanctuary Initiative (LUFASI) has said that proper awareness and functional governmental policies will increase attitudinal change.

The groups submission comes on the heels of a paper recently published in the journal BioScience that says global trends towards population stabilization, poverty alleviation, and urbanization are rewriting the future of biodiversity conservation and offering new hope for the world’s wildlife and wild places.

Titled From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Urbanization and the Future of Biodiversity Conservation, the paper says that for the first time in the modern era, the global demographic and economic trends that have resulted in unprecedented destruction of the environment are now creating the necessary conditions for a possible renaissance of nature.

Many people think that the population of people on Earth will always rise, but the authors – three experts at the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society – point out that the demographic transition is already well under way. The rate of growth in the global population has been dropping since the 1960s.

This was the thrust at the 2018 international day of biodiversity celebrated at the LUFASI Park on May 22. Speaking on the 25th anniversary of biodiversity, the founder, LUFASI Park and environmental activist Mr. Desmond Majekodunmi said that this is verification of how important protecting the wonderful biodiversity of the planet is.

“Biodiversity is all the beautiful living species in the planet, which is like a diamond in the sky, it is the only known planet that can habour any form of life, and what a makes this planet a living planet is the wonderful intricate complex web of living entities.

All the different types of plants from the trees, leaves, grasses, fungus on the trees, the amount of medicines that come out of the plants alone for centuries upon centuries. All the medicines that we have are based on these herbal medications.

“And then the animals from the little flying insects, birds, mammals and of course mankind which is just one of the many kinds that make up the web of biodiversity.

An important part of this web of life is the bee whose primary responsibility is to pollinate; without this, one-third of plants which gives good, fruits and all other products will not exist, because the bees are the pollinators of those particular plants.

If the number of bees drops, we will have catastrophic food reduction from these plants and this is just one example from this web of life.”

Majekodunmi noted that unfortunately humans have not gotten it into context that we are a part of nature; we still feel we are apart from nature.

“We have developed a lot of technologies that have enhanced our lives thereby neglecting nature and as a result we are causing a lot of damage and climate change is one of them; carbonising the atmosphere, pollution of plastics is a terrible activity that is breaking down the biodiversity in the seas, land degradation and deforestation.”

He said that the earth has limited natural resources and we cannot exploit it in an unlimited manner else we are planning a catastrophic future for our children.

Majekodunmi added that the biggest remedy has to come in our consciousness, “we have to be caring towards nature and show genuine love to the God who created nature.

When we put all that into our consciousness, we should act accordingly in our actions, our waste disposals should be properly sorted, use cleaner energy, planting of trees.