Due South

Is the biodiversity drain speeding up? As Juliette Jowit reports in a recent Guardian, a study by Simon Stuart of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission reveals that humans are driving extinctions ‘faster than new species can evolve’.

That might not surprise some in Madagascar — the California-sized ‘eighth continent’ off Africa’s southeastern coast, and a crucible of species from lemurs to octopus trees. This positively sizzling biodiversity hotspot is in danger of becoming little more than a barren political minefield.

All of which strikes a bleak note in this, the International Year of Biodiversity.

Debate is still raging in Northern economic policy circles on the best way out of the downturn. Meanwhile, Greece has hit the headlines in recent weeks over doubts about its long-term ability to service its national debt without outside assistance from the other euro-wielding members of the Eurozone, or the European Union.

Everyone is worried that if Greece is let off the hook the other PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) will have less incentive to take hard, and unpopular, measures to balance their books.

The majority seem to be looking forward to the day when economic growth returns and the situation returns to ‘normal’, but is a return to growth in the North a good thing? What are the long-term effects of such growth on the ecosystems upon which development and wellbeing depend? Should we be trying to make everything the way it was before, or is it time to challenge our assumptions that growth is always good?

Deforestation rates in Brazil nearly halved recently — the largest fall in two decades. Not bad for the country that, back in the 20th century, was so often portrayed in the media as losing a chunk of rainforest ‘the size of Wales’. That’s just one example of how the impacts of recession on the environment can tell us an awful lot about the way our economy works.

The recession has rocked global shipping and — like some of the super-tankers it operates — it can’t change course as quickly as it might like. But the lack of manoeuvrability in this sector may provide opportunities for other, more nimble actors, possibly opening up a foothold for developing-world exporters.

Pirates off the Horn of Africa — a 21st-century hotspot of maritime hit-and-run — are usually reported as victimising the crews of yachts or oil tankers straying into ‘their’ territory. The ordeal suffered by British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler is a case in point.

It’s hard for some to imagine sitting down to a meal of baboon, green monkey and warthog meat.

The ‘slump as opportunity’ concept is alive and well in UK government. Ed Miliband, the country’s Energy and Climate Change Minister, said today that recession will not deflect government efforts to cut carbon emissions and move to a low-carbon economy.

Farming is usually seen as dicing with nature. So how has agriculture managed to weather the financial storms of the last year so well?

To give and receive: it’s the essence of Christmas. Strip away the personal significance, though, and we’re really just looking at the process of consumption.