Are Humans on the Brink of Extinction?
It’s hard not to assess our mortality as a species when faced with a global pandemic that has markets tumbling, nations scrambling for a vaccine and global tensions at an all time high.
Over the past 500,000 years or so, life on Earth has nearly been wiped out at least 5 times that we know of — by things like natural disasters, volcanoes and pandemics, not to mention the space rock that smashed into the Gulf of Mexico, putting an end to the reign of dinosaurs and killing thousands of other species. These events are know as the Big Five mass extinctions, and according a few experts, we may be on the brink of a sixth.
A recent study published in Science Advances indicates the current extinction rate is possibly 100 times higher than normal, and that figure doesn’t include species that may disappear before we even discover them.
According to the centre for biological diversity, scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades.
Is there any chance we can stop the inevitable? Or are humans destined to follow in the footsteps of endangered species like the Northern White Rhino, where a severely diminished population led scientists around the world to join forces to save them, only to find they had acted too late?
“To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong,” says Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert in her Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sixth Extinction, “still, it misses the point. It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world. This capacity predates modernity.”
According to a review published on May 29 in the journal Science, current extinction rates are up to a thousand times higher than if human beings weren’t in the picture. Study leader Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University, analyzed various data sources — in particular the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, a global inventory of species — to produce the first major review of extinction data.
Pimm says that mobile apps, GIS satellite data, and online crowdsourcing may be a partial antidote to the problem. Through these technologies, “we’re mobilizing millions of people around the world, and we’re on the cusp of learning very much more about where species are than we have ever known in the past.” That’s critical, he says, because now “we know where the species are, we know where the threats are, and even though the situation is very bleak, we are better able to manage things.”
It is a generally held consensus among the scientific community that to save ourselves we have to save the endangered species around us. At the Hall of Biodiversity in New York City, a sign bearing a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich offers this insight,“In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.”
So how do we solve the increasing threat of extinction? And where will we find new models of conservation that push the boundaries?
Wherever there are seemingly impossible problems, there are smart and motivated people trying to solve those problems. When it comes to conservation, there may be hope on the horizon.
Already, there are a new wave of technologists who are looking to solve the riddle of conservation and provide new avenues to save endangered species. People like Tumelo Ramaphosa, who’s South African company StudEx Wildlife is building a blockchain exchange where people can buy fractional ownership in rare and endangered animals, and in doing so, pay for the costs associated with breeding and caring for those animals, effectively taking an active part in saving those species from extinction.
In a recent interview with GQ magazine, South Africa (video above) Tumelo reveals his thinking behind this groundbreaking approach to conservation. “The idea of digital ownership is to allow anyone in the world to be a virtual farmer,” Says Tumelo, “This means you are virtually caring for a specific animal. The idea of StudEx is to support an animal’s current habitat and environment through the sale of tokens.”
The Animal Exchange is a for-profit conservation marketplace where people from anywhere in the world can purchase a fractional ownership of a rare or endangered species with cryptocurrency or fiat. The first animals listed on the exchange will be the Southern White Rhino, and the proceeds of those token sales go toward the care and upkeep of specific animals that are registered in the blockchain, and cared for by a farmer who is committed to replenishing the Southern White Rhino population. In other words, these rhinos will not be sold to trophy hunters, which is another model that many farmers in South Africa tout as ‘conservation’.
Tumelo is also building a Research Fund on the back of the StudEx blockchain marketplace that provides a way to crowdsource for critical needs in South Africa, such as with the Covid-19 crisis and for time-sensitive scientific research through the sale of research tokens.
One of Tumelo’s partners is the renowned veterinary scientist Dr. Morné de la Rey, who heads up the not for profit organisation Rhino Repro which, “strives to ensure the indefinite survival of white and black rhino by harvesting, multiplying and storing of gentic material through the utilization of ground-breaking assisted reproduction techniques.”
The sale of research tokens on the StudEx platform provides funding to buy equipment and conduct procedures essential to bolster the Southern White Rhino population, which has now seen it’s population dip to below 30,000.
“We were too late to save the Northern White Rhino,” Says Dr. Morné de la Rey, “But if we take action now, we just might be able to save the Southern White”
These types of technological breakthroughs indicate that there may be a pathway to saving endangered species around the globe (and ourselves, if we are indeed approaching a precupice) and point to solutions from unlikely corners of the tech universe.
So when a study is released that says extinction rates are a thousand times higher because of human impact, we are likely to hear technologists say something like… well, then we need to find a solution that reduces the extinction rates by 2000%.
And with the help of innovative technology and a global population motivated by the fear of extinction, they might just be able to pull it off.
