Peter Ashton is the Charles Bullard Research Professor of Forestry and Director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University.
Professor Ashton effectively portrays the degradation of biodiversity in hot spots by describing his experience working
in northwest Borneo in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. He contributed to the planning of national parks created to preserve the
aboriginal forests that covered eighty percent of the land. "Now, the parks indeed have been largely legislated by my Malaysian
colleagues," he says. "The parks are there, which is very good news, but they constitute only about seven percent of that northern
Borneo landscape.... There's much more, but it is fundamentally trashed by degrading timber exploitation and, more rationally, by
conversion to an intensive agriculture." He expresses uncertainty about how much longer the parks can hold out.
Professor Ashton believes that two kinds of question should be addressed. He characterizes the first as the "scientific
question," focusing on research of how the extraordinary biodiversity is sustained in hot spots in order to actively manage the
remaining fragments. The Smithsonian Institution has convinced colleagues living in tropical areas to set up stations to record change
and understand the interactions between individuals and populations of plants and animals. The second question that Professor Ashton
wishes to address is "why is this over-exploitation in the tropics taking place?" The simple answer concerns the concentration of both
biodiversity and poverty in the tropics. Increased access to roads and trade have led to exploitation of the resource, and as poor
people are offered opportunities to join the cash economy, the previously-valued natural products of the forest are replaced by
commercial products. As a result, the value of the forest decreases.
Some scientists believe that biodiversity is unnecessary in light of the future capacity of biotechnology to create
organisms and crops. "But the unanswered question," Professor Ashton states, "is can we build ecosystems from man-made genotypes? The
answer, of course, is no." He describes the two major priorities as driving up the development of the middle class in poor countries so
that they will appreciate the biodiversity of ecosystems from a more modern perspective and making it worthwhile for people in those
countries to preserve that biodiversity. Professor Ashton concludes the presentation by asking, "Who are the current beneficiaries of
biodiversity?" He indicates that the beneficiaries should be paying for the maintenance of biodiversity. His answer is direct and
definitive: "It is ourselves."
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