Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 82

from the point of view of biodiversity and potential threats to future
food production. That is, to feed the world (at least in this scenario)
means depleting the genetic plant pool and prioritising certain species
over others, which, in turn, creates further problems.
One consequence of the erosion of plant genetic diversity
is that the capacity of the economically preferred plants to
resist pests and diseases is compromised. The marketability
of plant produce is not necessarily coterminous with the
inherent superior quality of the plants to be marketed or
selected for mono-cropping. Given the potential utility
of plants that market forces may erroneously dismiss
as economically useless, the short-sighted depletion of
the plant genetic pool can be both costly and dramatic.
(Mgbeoji, 2006: 181)
Put simply, 'over the ages farmers have relied upon diverse crop
varieties as protection from pests, blights and other forms of crop
failure' (French, 2000: 61). Reducing this diversity affects the inbuilt
mechanisms that helped to protect the soil and the vitality of the
overall agricultural process. Moreover, intensive use of land and soils
that rely upon chemical additives to ensure productivity, rather than,
for example, traditional methods of crop rotation, further diminishes
longer term agricultural viability.
Biodiversity is lessened due to the replacement of food crops, and the
diversity of food crops, with monoculture designed for an export market
(for example, Argentina and soybeans). Moreover, the intensive use of
the herbicide Roundup tends to make the earth sterile by destroying the
microbial flora essential for soil fertility and the disappearance of certain
bacteria makes the earth inert (see Robin, 2010: 265). In countries like
Indonesia and Brazil, the profitability of biofuel production is leading
to the establishment of large-scale plantations, the clearing of rainforests
and in some instances the forcing of indigenous people of their lands.
This deforestation process has been going on for a number of years,
supported by organisations such as the International Monetary Fund.
Clearing of land for export-oriented cash crops has been touted as a
key strategy to lift the economic performance of developing countries
(see French, 2000). Biofuels provide yet another avenue to accelerate
this process. Cutting down trees also has a direct bearing on global
warming. It has been estimated that by 2022, biofuel plantations could
destroy 98 percent of Indonesia's rainforests and that 'Every ton of palm