Protecting Biodiversity: A Covenant With Every Living Thing
The importance of
protecting biodiversity both for our survival and for our appreciation of God’s
presence in the world and the order of creation.
By Rabbi David Rosenn
The following article is reprinted with permission from SocialAction.com.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket," goes a
well known bit of folk wisdom. If the basket should fall, you'll lose
everything at once. While this may be plain common sense for the weekend
shopper, we seem to have a harder time following this principle when it comes
to preserving diversity among the world's living creatures.
To take just one example, 90% of all eggs sold in the United
States are laid by one breed of hen, the White Leghorn. What would happen to
our egg supply if some disease struck this breed?
Or consider the fact that India had 30,000 varieties of rice
just 50 years ago. Today it depends upon just 10 strains, most of which are not
native to India, but are hybrid seeds, engineered to produce higher yields in
shorter growing seasons. Farmers who switch to these new varieties often
abandon more genetically diverse local types, may of which then become extinct.
The result--a radical narrowing of the agricultural gene pool--places the world
food supply at risk. It's the global equivalent of putting all our eggs in one
basket.
Why do we need so many different kinds of rice in the first
place? In short, because genetic variety holds out the best hope for species
survival. In the 1970s, a virus swept through rice paddies from India to
Indonesia. Fortunately, seed banks contained samples of enough varieties to
produce a solution. After testing 6,237 kinds of rice for resistance to the
virus, only one species, an Indian strain called Oryza nivara, contained genes
that could withstand the virus. It was cross-bred with a commonly cultivated
variety, and the hybrid seed is now grown across Asia.
So are seed banks the solution to our problem? While seed
banks represent an important strategy for preserving nature's genetic bounty,
many types of seeds cannot be stored by conventional means. Furthermore, only a
tiny fraction of plant species is covered by seed-bank inventories, and it is
far beyond the resources of such programs to collect and maintain the thousands
of endangered varieties. Most important, while seeds from certain species can
be stored, their "partners in nature"-- insects that pollinate it,
fungi that bring it nutrients, etc--cannot all be stored at the same time. In
the absence of their symbiotic partners, many seed-bank species do not survive
when replanted.
Today, scientists suggest that the best way to preserve the
world's biodiversity is to preserve as many as possible of its natural
eco-systems. Especially important are those such as rain forests, which contain
a large concentration of plant and animal species. By protecting the global
environment, and specifically by designating certain biological
"hotspots" as inviolate preserves, we can slow the narrowing of the
genetic flexibility that ensures life on Earth.
Rabbi Yehudah said in the name of Rav: "Everything that
God created in the world has a purpose. Even things that a person may consider
to be unnecessary have their place in creation." (Breishit Rabbah 10:8).
We are witnessing and helping produce the most rapid decline of species
diversity in the history of the earth, and yet we barely understand the place
in creation of most of the world's species, including those that have been lost
to us through extinction. Researchers have recently discovered that the rosy
periwinkle of Madagascar produces two alkaloids that cure most victims of two
of the deadliest cancers: Hodgkin's disease and acute lymphocytic leukemia. How
many sources of healing have been lost to us forever through environmental
neglect?
Reinforcing this midrashic awareness of the versatility of
species, Judaism contains a legal proscription against wanton destruction of
property and natural resources, known by its command form bal tashchit,
"do not destroy." This prohibition reflects the belief that human
beings are temporary tenants on God's earth (Leviticus 25:23), charged to till
it for their needs, but also to tend it, that it may be saved for future
generations. (Genesis 2:15)
The Torah sounds the theme of conservation in this week's
reading as well, through its description of the careful preservation of every
species on earth in Noah's ark, both the "clean" and the
"unclean." After the flood, God makes a covenant with Noah's
descendants and with "every living thing on earth" never again to
destroy the world. (Genesis 9:8-10) Do we dare allow ourselves to proceed with
that which God has foresworn?
Preserving biodiversity is an issue of planetary survival,
but it is also--as we have seen--a theological issue. Nature's stunning variety
often invokes feelings of deep fascination and awe, attitudes closely
associates with religious experience. Maintaining our capacity to appreciate
such feelings--our capacity for wonder--may enable us to enlarge our sense of
God's presence in the world and to enhance our appreciation for the sidrei
breishit--the orders of creation. Conversely, by allowing creation to be
diminished, we invariably diminish ourselves as well.
To find out more about the sources and scope of the crisis
of biodiversity, as well as some possible solutions, I recommend these books: Diversity
of Life by Edward O. Wilson (Harvard University Press, 1992) and The
Rain Forest In Your Kitchen (Island Press, 1992).
Rabbi David
Rosenn is the Executive Director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. AVODAH is
a year-long program that combines work on poverty issues in New York City with
Jewish study and community building. For more information about AVODAH, please
visit the AVODAH website at http://www.avodah.net
