Weeklog Kartika Liotard: I saw two polar bears...
Weeklog Kartika Liotard: I saw two polar bears...
2010 is the UN Year of Biodiversity, declared to be such because the wealth of species of to be found in nature is under pressure. Take the polar bear population. There are still some 25,000 left, but by 2050 their numbers will have fallen by two-thirds. Why? Not because it is too warm or too cold for them, but because there are people who hunt them for their pelts, their teeth and their claws. The EU has issued a stiff call for opposition to this: as a MEP I participated in this call with complete conviction, because this sort of hunting is senseless, cruel and unworthy of the dignity either of the animal or of humanity.
In sizzling hot Qatar there is very little in the way of either flora or fauna. There is, however, a great deal of desert sand. And last week there was an international conference to discuss how trade in endangered species could be combated. In this statelet of the Arabian Gulf, the last few days have seen the fate of the polar bear decided. It proved impossible to reach an international agreement to stop the hunt because Greenland, the only country ever to leave the EU, Canada, and Norway, which has never been a member of the EU, do not see trade in polar bears as a real threat to the species. They exhibit in this a typically EU form of reasoning, in which economic freedoms and interests weigh more heavily than does biodiversity. The logic from which they proceed is upside down: a ban would damage the indigenous peoples' trade in animals…
"I saw two bears making sandwiches, Oh, that was a wonder.
It was a wonder, what a wonder, that those bears could make sandwiches.
Hi hi hi, ha ha ha. I stood there and I watched them."
- Traditional Dutch Children's Song
So the song that many children have grown up with turns out to be about the global polar bear population: I see only two surviving bears, in captivity, making sandwiches for the amusement of the public. Blue-fin tuna sandwiches. Because blue-fin tuna is another species which had, last week in Qatar, to give way to economic interests...