Madam, – Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, a huge amount of media attention has been focused on the collapse of other financial institutions as well as the perilous state of the public finances in many countries. History tells us that banks do recover and countries such as Japan and Germany did rebuild their economies after the second World War and became two of the richest nations on earth.
Scientists are telling us that globally, nearly a quarter of all mammal species, a third of amphibians and one-third of flowering species are threatened with extinction this century, unless radical remedial action is taken in the next five to 10 years. The rapid destruction of forests – every year an area almost twice the size of Ireland is lost – not only pushes the species living in the forest over the precipice of extinction – but also contributes to climate change.
History also teaches us that when the living world is destroyed, especially through the extinction of species, the biosphere does not recover. The fiscal deficit in Ireland which we are now trying to bridge over four or six years will pale into insignificance in comparison to the pain and suffering which every succeeding generation will experience in the wake of the disintegration of the living world.
This is why I find it astonishing that the UN Conference on Biodiversity which is currently meeting in Nagoya in Japan has received very little attention in the media. This UN Convention, which Ireland signed in 1996, is attempting to staunch the hemorrhaging of the living world before it is too late. A small fraction of the money poured into bad banks in the past two years would go a long way to protect vital global ecosystems such as tropical forests, coral reefs and river systems. This would ensure that future generations of all species would inherit a world as fruitful and beautiful as the one which my generation was born into. Putting banks, bondholders and the financial markets before life and the needs of poor people shows how much our priorities have been skewed. – Yours, etc,