Nicholas Rainer
19 August 2008
Port Louis — It's been gaining in popularity in recent times. Climate change has, in effect, been giving credibility to the Butterfly Effect, which posits that a minor change in one part in a system can unleash major changes in another part of the system. This phenomenon is all the more apposite if one adheres to the Gaia hypothesis. This philosophy affirms that the totality of Earth's organisms and their environment act as a "single, self-regulating system". Accordingly, small changes can upset the whole planet.
In today's "Florum", a student of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dhaval Adjodha, notes an explosion in the population of the "Nephrata inaurata" spider in the Plaine-Wilhems region, as well as a steep decline in the number of butterflies that used to frequent the district's fields. The use of animals as environmental indicators is an increasingly widespread technique. What do Dhaval's observations mean for Mauritius?
In its "Digest of Environment Statistics" 2006, the CSO warns that, "intensive use of chemical-based fertilizers and other agro-chemicals may contribute to the pollution of the environment through the leaching of nitrate to ground water". Over and above its implications for the country's water supplies, the abusive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is taking its toll on the island's insect populations.
The UK offers a pertinent case study. Bee populations there have plummeted over the past year. Known as the Colony collapsing disorder (CCD), this phenomenon has farmers running scared. Last week, Alison Benjamin wrote in the "Guardian" that a third of UK beehives perished during the winter. And the ramifications of such a drastic population decrease are frightening. "More worryingly, insects pollinate a third of everything we eat - most fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and forage for our livestock.
As we become more and more dependent on a monoculture system of growing food, we become more reliant on the honeybee to do the bulk of this work; trucked into an area for just a few days or weeks when a single crop is blossoming, they can be moved in their hives to more fertile pastures when the orchards and fields turn into a barren wasteland", she explained.
Mauritius is more familiar with monoculture than most countries. The world food crisis means that a continued over-reliance on the cane industry and the disappearance of butterflies could be catastrophic for the country's agriculture and, by extension, food security. There is an urgent need to collect more data on both these issues in order to understand their possible impacts on our environment. On the upside, the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation will soon be launching a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about our endemic reptiles.
Dhaval believes that each Mauritian can make a big difference by taking small daily actions. The Butterfly Effect might just prove him right.
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