Global Indigo

The world holds far more than the 40,000 or so species currently being utilized on a daily basis. That is why the exploratory research efforts of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries must go beyond simply cataloguing the experiences of local peoples. Although we have no precise idea of how many plant, animal, fungal, and microbial species populate the planet, there are at least 10 million of them. The living world is a vast cauldron of genetic variation: Most of it remains entirely unknown to us, yet much is undoubtedly of great potential use.

For good reason, much of the exploratory research has been focused on the tropical rain forests. Most of the terrestrial species of our planet reside in the Tropics, and tropical forests are disappearing at a frightening clip. Estimates vary, but 30 hectares per minute now seems, if anything, to be an underestimate. More recently, however, some attention has been shifted to the sea, the last great earthly frontier. We are, of course, ourselves a terrestrial species, having abandoned the sea to take up life on land some 350 million years ago. Until recently, our direct utilization of sea life has been restricted to fishing and to hunting marine mammals. This last great vestige of a hunting-gathering mode of existence until recently threatened to extirpate many whale and seal species and, as we have already seen, now threatens to collapse the most productive fisheries in the world.

Corals and sponges are but two of the major groups of marine invertebrate animals that live firmly rooted to the sea floor. They don’t move around, so they can’t escape when a predatory fish or crab comes by and tries to bite off a piece. These sessile creatures have evolved a stunning array of chemical defenses against such attacks — defenses that have recently begun to attract a lot of attention from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The case for the great diversity of living species as a storehouse of vital genetic variation is crystal clear. We have relied upon that variation increasingly since we developed agriculture, even as it has indeed seemed that we were abandoning nature. That reliance on the natural genetic storehouse will only increase as time goes on, a compelling reason why we must arrest the destruction of ecosystems and species that right now is systematically dismantling and destroying this vital resource.