Will Insects Outdo Us in Destroying the Planet?
Simple bugs may soon be able to destroy our lovely planet.
Since the beginning of life, the temperature has determined which species have lived where on the planet. In the process, it created the complex food webs that today feed all life forms. Temperature is a crucial determiner of the flora and fauna of a region. Trees that thrive in a given set of conditions may not survive in another. It is true even for bugs, pests, and insects.
In the past, whenever there were variations in the temperature, the different life forms would often evolve traits to survive in the new conditions of their habitats. Ultimately, these variations were happening slowly, allowing evolution to work its magic.
However, today, human-induced climate change has changed the temperature across the planet way too fast that different life forms have no means to evolve the necessary survival traits. Consequently, many lifeforms have started moving polewards to ensure that they find a temperature that suits their requirements.
Earlier, the temperature difference created a natural barrier to these movements. But such barriers no longer exist. Insects, due to their small sizes, can make these movements rather easily. This is creating an existential crisis for our ecosystems and, by extension, us.
Threat to Our Forests
Every plant and forest has some natural resistance to the pests and insects present in its own temperature zone. However, they would have little to no resistivity to a pest from another temperature zone.
In the twenty-first century, this ‘Invasion of the Pests’ will be one of the biggest threats to our forests and farmlands. In fact, more than half the world’s forests face these dangers. If even a small portion of them were to collapse due to attacks from foreign pests, it would have devastating consequences for humans.
These pest attacks will further accelerate the desertification of the world. A forest attacked by new pests would not have the defense mechanism to counter the attack and would collapse under its stress quite fast.
Once a forest ecosystem collapse, there is almost no mechanism for it to ever heal, given the conditions of the post-climate-change world. As a result, it would quickly turn into a desert or, in the best-case scenario, a grassland. It would further accelerate warming due to the release of sequestered carbon.
This invasion has already begun. Globally, insects attacked over 85 million hectares of forest between 2003 and 2012. In the last decade alone, there has been an almost 25% increase in the damage caused by insects to forests. Insect and other pests are already the leading cause of forest disturbances other than the fire in almost all geographic regions.
In North America, large tracts of forest land have been lost to attacks from new pests. In eastern Canada, for example, 99% of the 850,000+ ash trees in Toronto died because of the emerald ash borer beetle. These numbers are scary.
In the 1990s — the beetle destroyed over 45,000 hectares of Canadian forests every year. But the forest ecosystem was equipped to deal with this damage. However, between 2004 and 2014, this figure increased to over 6.4 million hectares per year. That’s an increase of over 100 times, and no forest ecosystem can deal with such massive, fast-paced changes. As a result, forests that had been intact for millennia have been destroyed in a matter of decades.
Remember, these are the early days of climate change. What awaits us down the line will be way more dangerous than what we face today.
Impacts on Farms
Our crops, too, would not be able to resist attacks from foreign pests. Crop yields could fall up to 40% due to attacks from new insects. In fact, yield losses to insects would single‑handedly wipe out any potential gains in arable land. The only way to save our crops would be — to practically douse them with pesticides and insecticides. Hence, we would be turning our food more toxic simply to be able to get a proper harvest.
As the planet warms up further, agriculture in the tropics will become much more difficult. The tropics would essentially face the worst impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, these impacts have already started.
Additionally, the tropical world also is home to the developing world and a larger population. These countries, on account of much lower farm output, are already a net importer of food. Further, these countries are expected to experience loss of arable land of as high as 40%. As a result, with a failing climate, they will be forced to increase their food imports from the developed world.
However, as the pests move polewards, they will create an additional threat for these farms in the higher latitude. The developed countries may even struggle to feed their own people due to high crop losses due to pest attacks, leading to a food export reduction. When that happens, how will the developing world be able to feed its people?
Climate change is hence going to make it very difficult to feed the world in the future, and pests will play a crucial role in this regard.
Diseases
A big reason for the rise in infectious diseases in the 21st century has been the increase in the geographical habitat and population of vectors (mosquitoes, rats, fleas, etc.) that carry them. With the planet becoming warmer, several rodents that earlier survived only in the tropics are now able to survive and spread disease over larger areas.
According to a study in the journal Nature, nearly one-third of the diseases originating in the last ten years were vector-borne and their jumps into the human population coincided with unusual changes in the climate. It means that more people are now going to face these threats.
In fact, a study in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases predicts that by 2050 these vectors will reach over 500 million more people in newer geographies.
The early trends are here already.
In 2013 New York reported its first-ever case of locally transmitted Dengue fever, a viral infection common to the tropics but unheard of in America.
Today, large mammal populations are suffering a decline at the hands of hunters and loggers. However, smaller animals such as bats, rats, and other rodents are thriving, either because they are more resilient to the changing environment or adept at hiding from humans.
With them thriving, the health of the human population is at risk. A warmer climate, more precipitation, and the loss of predators will further boost their numbers and, with that, the risk of infectious diseases.
The 1999 Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) outbreak in Panama is a typical example of this. In that year, the country’s Los Santos province experienced nearly three times more rainfall than usual. It caused a substantial increase in the region’s rodent population, which eventually led to an outbreak of HPS, a life-threatening respiratory disease.
As the planet heats up further, these conditions will exist over a larger area. As a result, more people will face these dangers.
Newer threats are emerging on the planet at a faster pace than what we can deal with. Our ability to mitigate these dangers will be very limited.
The solution to these problems does not lie in the future. They lie in the present because unless we change our ways today, our future will be extremely bleak, and we will live in a world that we hardly understand.
Thank you for reading.
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