Friday, July 21, 2006

Make a paella, destroy the planet

Jeffrey McNeely's focus on mangroves to highlight the need for a new global initiative on biodiversity is well chosen:
"Scientists including economists have made it very clear that mangroves are incredibly valuable as mangroves, much more valuable than they are as shrimp farms...But because of political reasons, mangroves get converted into shrimp ponds which produce cheap shrimps for export at the cost of long-term environmental protection".
One of the fairly new surprises for some has been the possible importance of mangroves in the biogeochemical cycle (see here).

Can the rich one billion of us be bothered enough to change our purchasing habits regarding shrimps?

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