Download Article for Vanity Fair By Achim Steiner - G8 and Parrot Fish

Article for Vanity Fair By Achim Steiner
G8 and Parrot Fish
March 2007--I cannot say for certain whether parrot fish were foremost in G8+5
Environment Ministers’ minds when they made their agreements in Potsdam.
But to see the world’s biodiversity high on the agenda of such an august gathering
was long overdue.
Indeed it was in a sense fitting that, in the same room where allied leaders drew up
plans to try and deliver a more stable post-World War II world, a possible truce if not
a peace deal with the globe’s wildlife may have been born.
The ministers, from industrialized nations and rapidly developing countries, made the
explicit link between economic development, poverty eradication and the other life
forms that share this planet.
I mention parrot fish, because they underline the huge and often overlooked goods
and services which nature and nature-based assets freely provide.
According to Richard Bennett, a zoologist at the Watamu Marine Reserve in Kenya
and our guide on a recent family snorkeling trip, parrot fish use their beak-like mouths
to munch through coral reef heads.
In one day a single parrot fish can produce the equivalent of one Kg of new beach
with the fine white powder emerging as a plume from its business end.
Take these master-beach builders out of the Indian Ocean as a result of say the
plundering of marine resources by industrialized country fleets, and it is so long sandy
foreshore and goodbye foreign tourists and foreign exchange-- revenues that are
among the investments needed to overcome poverty.
Parrot fish and their coral reef ecosystem also underline the links between biodiversity
and climate change—quite rightly the over arching issue in the historical halls of
Cecilienhof.
Rising sea surface temperatures threaten to bleach and kill coral reefs in many areas
and carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning oil, coal and gas, is
already starting to acidify the oceans.
The commitment by G8+5 environment ministers to move forward on climate change,
alongside all the other strong signals and commitments emerging this year, was
another plus in Potsdam.
I certainly came away in a more positive and optimistic mood over climate change
and over biodiversity—perhaps parrot fish too may have cause to sleep a bit easier
tonight if ( and here I can hear the readers’ pens being sharpened already!!) parrot fish
sleep at all.