Climate change kills species long before they can perish from heat and draught

When in my last blog I wrote about my concern how the IMF impedes the increase of field staff required to grow along with the protected areas that have been created, mostly over the last two decades, as its structural adjustment programmes prescribe governments to reduce both staffing and budgets, I realized that another dramatic effect currently contributes to the onslaught of species.

Climate change has become the new wave of environmental concern. As governments have become increasingly budget aware, the ministers of finance do anything to prevent additional spending. New political agendas will have to be financed from budgets for politically less hot programmes. Biodiversity conservation has lost its political momentum and much of its financing is now used for other purposes, particularly climate change. The largest financing for biodiversity conservation has been redirected to different other noble and important directions, one of it being combating climate change. The World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF is now also using part of its funding to combat climate change.

As global change gets more and more attention from political icons, like Al Gore and Tony Blair, nature conservation will increasingly be pushed to the background. With the financing of the protected areas in developing countries already being very inadequate, the reduction of the budgets for biodiversity conservation to finance global change abatement, leads to ADDITIONAL species loss. Not because of climate change, but because of budget reduction! As a result, climate change kills species, long before the effects of global warming and draughts have permanently altered the ecosystems. Don't let this happen! Speak out to your government representative and let him/her know that for you species conservation is just as important as climate change abatement.