The world has only 34 recognized biodiversity areas, and many of these have become hotspots, or areas where at least 70% of the original habitat has been lost. Skip is going to talk about what makes a biodiverse area so important, some of the threats to these hotspots around the world. And how the loss of our biodiverse areas is affecting all of us and is soon to reshape the way we live. >> There's a lot of science going on. And, and but the main point in terms of extreme weather is that [COUGH] the problems we're having in terms of health issues. And the issues leading to conflict is that in every single, every single continent, so the slide to the left, every single continent is, is experiencing severe drought. And the brown areas on this slide that spreads out, shows the, the planet, you can see on the left Southern United States and, and Mexico. These are all areas where we have drought, but most important is that this is tied to aquifers because the aquifers are unable to supply the amount of groundwater that is being used for agriculture at the time. So the big areas on the planet are the southwestern part of the United States and upper Mexico, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, especially China. So again, those aquifers are on, the amount of water being drawn to provide agriculture is two to three times more than what the, what the aquifers can provide. So, these areas are not sustainable. And food, growth is not sustainable. It's important to understand what biodiversity areas are. They contain the majority of the world's vascular plants and vertebrates. They should be seen as the sort of the biological oxygen of the world. That then allo, provide seeds and water, and other things for other areas where there is also agricultural growth and populations. But they are all dependent on the biodiversity area that we have. Also high biodiversity areas are the major safeguard against infectious diseases. Because what they've produced, probably before mankind ever came on the planet is the ability to keep different microorganisms in check. There's, there is no real competition or dominance of them. So the biodiversity system provides food, provides fresh water. Provides balance to species of bacteria, viruses, the other microorganisms. Raw materials and fuel, regulate climate and air quality, and maintain social fertility and pollinate crops to other areas. So they're carried by the winds and the rivers and etc. And when we're talking about biodiverse areas, we're talking about not only what's on land, but in the oceans. And this slide depicts the fact that [COUGH] the, the use of, of the resources in these both biodiverse areas is exceeding their ability to provide the resources. So we're having more and more threats to the biodiverse areas, and they are depleting exponentially as the, as the years go on. Biodiverse hotspots is another entity. This occurs when there's a loss of at least 70% of the original habitat in vascular plants and, and vertebrates and others. So high biodiversity is as I stated, a major safeguard against disease. But when it is encroached by mankind, whether it's in Africa, southwestern part of the United States [COUGH] even in New England. But it's certainly in the Middle East and other areas. Those diseases that were in check and lived in balance then become dominant. So it's been man's encroachment in those biodiverse areas that have led to HIV, led to Lyme disease, West Nile fever, Niba, and Ebola. They always existed, but they live, existed in check. Also important with what we talked about before is that 80% of our major conflicts have occurred in 23 of 34 of the most biologically diverse and threatened places, the biodiverse areas in the world. So even before people knew what these biodiverse areas were, at least, people recognize that people living in those areas were living better, they were healthier. Why don't we take that area over, okay? And it's interesting that we even have today warfare or disaster ecologists who come in after major disasters, whether natural or, or man-made to try to bring back those biodiverse areas to what they were before the conflict occurred. So this slide just shows the number of places that we have biodiverse areas in the world in the in the darker gray. And around blacker areas are where there have been conflicts. If you see North America there, we only have one biodiverse area and that starts in Sacramento and goes South. But the whole nation of New Zealand is a biodiverse area. And that's one reason why so many countries of the world are trying to buy up land and resources in, in New Zealand which is a big area of their economy even [COUGH] the war in Iraq. The areas between the Tigris and Euphrates River was one of our earliest recognized biodiverse areas, the cradle of civilization. But because of the war, essentially, that biodiverse area has, has disappeared. But also because of damming of, of the Tigris and Euphrates River by Turkey and Syria, essentially a lot of that water is down to a trickle. So that is no longer considered a viable biodiverse area. So one of the, the, the minister of interior stated about four or five years ago that thank God we have oil, at least we now can provide, buy food for our people. And again, the biodiverse area in North America is that area in California you can see on the left. And it was always viable because of the snow and the water that resulted in the spring. But we now have a a depletion and a [COUGH] biodiverse crisis, as you can see on the right. Which quite honestly at, with the best of prognosis even with, with good rains this year. That will not recover earlier than about four to five years. The last among the four emerging crises that are impacting the planet are what's called, been called emergencies of scarcity. And we're really talking about scarcity of energy, water, and food. And an interesting thing from the public health standpoint is that, you know, rather than defining the public health in, in terms of the infant mortality rate or the maternal mortality rate in countries, increasingly. And it's sort of a mysterious kind of evolution because it's not been, it's not been something that's been dictated. But increasingly, we're really looking at the public health status of nations depending on how much in terms of energy, water, and food, and, and agricultural land that they have. This was never done before. Certainly known that at least by 2030, 40% of the global population will be without adequate water. In the Middle East, that's accelerated. Yemen would run out of water in four years. Afghanistan, will, will, will come soon after that in other middle eastern countries. Matter of fact, majority of wars really right now are about not only water but about energy. And so we're not really getting what, what we call the typical wars that we saw back after World War II but increasingly aggressive distributional conflicts. So its populations fighting over what's available in terms of energy, water, and food. We also have and probably precipitating a lot of this, but again, it's going on under our nose, is land grabbing. And primarily it's the very, very rich import dependent countries. China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and a few Middle Eastern countries are investing in farmland and resources whether in foreign countries to meet their national food, water and energy security needs. So a lot of the milk that China's using is coming from, from the dairies in, in New Zealand. Our, our own milk prices and corn prices have gone up in, in the middle part of our country, because we're shipping more to China that has the ability to purchase that. There are a lot examples, but you need, this is, this is illustrative and that is the case of Madagascar. And that was in the news for about three, three years. And [COUGH] South Korea wanted to purse, purchase [COUGH] a in a no cost 100-year lease, half of all the arable land in Madagascar. And this is all forestry land. Interesting, with what I just discussed in biodiversity, this is also a, an international biodiversity area. [COUGH] what they wanted to do was to cut down all the forest and grow corn there. Corn is the staple for Korea. And ship that corn to Korea. This agreement was signed. And within a week, there was a popular uprising and coup that took over the government of Madagascar. And the first thing they did was cancel the contract that they had with, with South Korea. And South Korea's response was we want to plant corn there to ensure our food security, because food can be a weapon in this world. So that's rather prophetic. This is what the governments are thinking about. The other thing that the people who negotiated the contract in, in Madagascar did not know, is that the contract would also, also allow what was underneath the land to go to South Korea. And what it was, was one and a half, all the water clean water, one and half times held back by the Hoover Dam. So they had, they had built big ships to pump that water out and bring the water, the clean water back to South Korea. And what does South Korea have little of? One, arable land. One, the to plant the corn. And two, the water to do it. So this is how it's being done. So we also have issues about who owns the water. And there are many countries including our own that are looking to privatize water. Next one. I just put this in that the militaries may be really there to guard water as it becomes more scarce. And redefining the role of the military to, to protect these distributional kinds of issues. Because we have enough water in the world, we have enough food in the world. And we probably have enough arable land in the world, but they're all distributed. And so we're having individual nation state kinds of conflicts that are erupting because of it. If we look at the health issues tied to the four previous problems that, that the world is facing. What is emerging are these and probably many more but [COUGH] certainly because the extreme weather we have, we've had in Eastern Europe in France and Af, and Australia and certainly Africa. Urban heat, islands temperatures and and vulnerable people, especially children and the elderly dying. We have, for the first time, more people in the world dying from air pollution complications than diarrhea, believe it or not. And we certainly have vector-borne and brain borne diseases that are changing as the biodiversity changes within those countries or within those marine areas. Certainly threatened food supply so rather than having, as I stated, less malnutrition and dehydration, we have more and the quality of the food. In the noncommunicable disease, as I mentioned, the obesity and the the psychological problems. The heart disease, the type 2 and type 1 diabetes that we see with urbanization, is now seen all over the world. And certainly, sea level rise as we saw, as I gave you an example of and the Pacific Islands is all public health-related as water and sanitation mixes. And as we see in, in Australia and other places, the ozone depletion. Causing cataracts and certain cancers like melanomas at, at an earlier age. So if we do take one of the examples, because we tend to focus on the developing world as being the problem. But Australia is really the most vulnerable developed country. And one of the reasons is that the only countries that's under the biggest hole in the ozone layer. Rising temperatures, they've had massive temperatures in, in the countries during their, during their summer months. Lower overall rainfall yet heavy rains in some areas especially where there's been a lot of propagation of, of, of, of different infectious diseases. And so their major natural disasters are drought, and the complications, floods and wildfires that are seen. So worst mosquito breeding ever, especially in the west around Perth, and then spreading to the, to the east and to the south. So there's alterations to the patterns of infectious diseases like melioidosis and malaria, and dengue and others, that are transmitted by mosquito breeding. But with the ozone layer also, two out of three people in Australia over the age 70 have skin, skin cancer related to to the ozone layer before the age of 70. And if you look at the Great Barrier Reef, always a tourist attraction but remember this, we have surface fish and midline fish, and bottom fish. With the surface fish, there's not enough barrier with the water to protect them. So we're beginning to see many new cancers in the fish themselves. So as far as outbreaks, pandemics, and epidemics, yes. And we have cholera ende, en, endemic in, in the southern part of the in this, United States and Louisiana. But it was never seen in Northern Europe like Scandinavia. But because of the warming oceans, we're now seeing the vibrio species in which cholera is one part of that species. Now for the first time, in Scandinavia. And this is what's happening with other parts of the world as the oceans warm. Thank you.
