SUBJECT: Trade and transport: the missing link
AUTHOR: John Shores, Sustainable Development Consultant, San Jose, California, USA

SUMMARY: The author points out that we often skim over the effects of transport itself when considering biodiversity. Transportation is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gases, and global climate change can adversely affect biodiversity far removed from the producers or consumers in the globalised economy.

KEYWORDS: Transport, climate change, greenhouse gases, globalisation.

In our discussion of trade and biodiversity, we should keep in mind that trade implies transportation. Transportation is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gases. Indeed petroleum-based transportation systems may be the biggest black eye in the globalised economy. If we sum the environmental effects of exploration and drilling, pipeline construction and pumping, shipping and storage, cracking and distribution, and finally fuel consumption and waste cleanup – our petroleum-based global economy may have greater and more widespread effects on biodiversity than any other single industry (or tied with agriculture and forestry).

But I want to draw our attention particularly to the effects of transportation on biodiversity through greenhouse gases and global climate change. This deserves special mention because it may not be obvious or apparent. The bleaching of a coral reef may be thousands of miles removed from the site of an oil field or the person driving a large SUV. Trade makes unfettered consumerism possible by offering more and more products at lower and lower prices. We may not have improved the quality of life, but we sure have moved a lot of materials and products around.

In addition to the direct and indirect effects that Jeff McNeely mentioned in his opening remarks, there are also these dispersed global effects of trade that are no less sinister.