**7. Pollution**

**6.2. Energy**

86 Biodiversity - The Dynamic Balance of the Planet

**6.3. Drugs and ethics**

**6.4. Food**

The use of fossil hydrocarbons extracted from the Mexican Gulf, the Northern Sea etc., as energy sources results in the volatilization of carbon in the atmosphere at rates up to one million times faster than it took for phytoplankton to fix and sequester it into sediments as oil beds [25]. Atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane, sulphur dioxide and other combustion products, create an artificial greenhouse effect after only 150 years of exploitation (now largely marine), adding to natural volcanic activity. Global warming and ocean acidifi‐ cation are both regarded as major potential sources of marine biodiversity destruction [43].

Biodiversity loss seems to be the inevitable toll to pay for a global economic expansion relying heavily on the use of biogenic productions. When such exploitations occur at the vicinity of marine biodiversity hotspots (coral reefs for example), which concentrate much of the useful and yet unexplored chemical diversity [26], we run into the risk of losing a lot of useful model

Drugs are basically dangerous when ingested, injected or applied externally without caution, and man has always made the difference between edibles and toxic or venomous substances, or foodstuff corrupted with microbes. Medicine men and witch doctors knew empirically how to use fresh plants and how to blend them to cure fevers, wounds and other ailments, and this knowledge was passed on exclusively to younger initiates who henceforth gained access to special social status and were highly respected. Today, bioactive substances are patented and the administration of prescription drugs is tightly controlled. As mentioned earlier, the drug industry is one of the very few primary sources of revenue in any country's economy. Explo‐ ration of novel sources of natural products in biodiversity hotspots, terrestrial or marine, is a touchy subject. Intellectual property should be shared in the benefit of local populations, eventually leading to their active participation in the cultivation and the preparation and purification of extracts, on a non-destructive and sustainable basis. This is especially true for developments that were guided by ethnopharmacological surveys, i.e. the participation of local medicine men. Marine bioexploration, however, is almost exclusively based on system‐ atic screening of marine plants, invertebrates and microbes, but it should be subjected to territorial laws like the exploitation of forests, fishing zones or mines in a participative manner. More specifically, endangered or rare species should be identified, and sampling procedures

molecules and end up with a hostile, impoverished microbial world instead [44].

be conducted in accordance with internationally established practices [45].

We have purposely ignored aspects directly related to food, i.e. the exploitation of marine resources through fisheries and the farming of selected fish and seafood species. The sustain‐ able management of natural stocks and the influence of global warming on natural biodiversity profiles is a major concern in the 21st century. Human population has almost trebled since WWII, and *Homo sapiens* dominates terrestrial vertebrate biomass (half a billion tons) to the point that meat protein supplies will be scarcer. After being a hunter-gatherer, man has become

Man does not always recycle the wastes he generates, far from it.

#### **7.1. Urban developments**

There are two major issues to consider: one is structural and the other is biological.

Structural issues are linked to urban planning and the exploitation of natural zones, and to the fate of obsolete constructions and roads that cannot be recycled back into their original components - the net result being a shift from marine destructive exploitation (sand) to terrestrial pollution (discharges). Wherever possible, alternatives to marine sand must be sought for housing, to save the resource and perhaps use recycled wood-based products and recyclable organic polymers.

Biological issues emerge from the disposal of untreated sewage, of fertilizers, pesticides, drugs, household maintenance products and industrial by-products. Regarding sewage, local enrichment of waterways and coastal areas, especially in nitrogen and phosphorus, causes toxic phytoplankton blooms, and unwanted algal proliferations that tend to displace indige‐ nous species. This is especially true for complex oligotrophic ecosystems in which nutrients are efficiently used and recycled. In coral reefs, bacterial charges are introduced directly or via invasive algal proliferations [46], favoring the dominance of pathogenic strains and reducing the natural microbial diversity [47], [43].

### **7.2. Energy**

Regarding energy-related matters, losses due extraction and transport (ship degassing, black tides due to wreckages etc.) are the cause of episodic but massive biodiversity destructions in littoral zones, by asphyxiating wildlife and by destroying skin protection barrier. The exploi‐ tation of light hydrocarbons from shales is currently the subject of intense debates, especially regarding its consequences on water quality [48]. The exploitation of gas hydrates represents an attractive energy source, but its exploitation may prove difficult to control, and its release from the thawing of the permafrost due to global warming difficult to evaluate [49].

#### **7.3. Synthetic drugs, artificial molecules, genetically modified organisms**

The modern world is global and highly competitive. Being positioned on an economic niche requires achieving results and outcompeting contenders, no matter what the human and environmental consequences are in the long term. Thousands of synthetic molecules - insec‐ ticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, conditioning agents, food additives, fuel additives, lubricants, household products, plasticizers, flame retardants, to name a few- have been synthesized without sufficiently questioning their degradability and speciation once released in the environment or abandoned, or offering detoxication, storage/disposal or reusability solutions. Highly reactive pesticides can cause immediate non-specific destruction to useful pollinizing insects and kill birds, others may insidiously find their way up the food chains and eventually poison top predators - this is the case of highly stable and carcinogenic biphenyl organohalogens. Chronic allergies and cancers are documented through the regular exposure to more and more food additives and household products. Specific information can be obtained from associative websites.

tions into future scenarios. Huge supercomputers are piling up petabytes of data waiting for bioinformatics advances to organize and make sense of them, and in the quest of the reassuring "big picture" that will once for all settle intellectual disputes, quench the thirst for the unknown, and with the hope that, ultimately, some biogeoclimatic equilibrium will be automatically

Marine Biodiversity and Chemodiversity — The Treasure Troves of the Future

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57394

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How most of us are doing depends not on fluctuations of the stock market, nor on the price of the latest hi-tech widget, nor on whether the next crime scene is going to take place in our neighborhood, but on how fast our natural environment is going to degrade. Why not redirect our priorities and efforts to better understand how our biosphere functions, how species interact, how biomes are connected, how biodiversity is maintained in marine and terrestrial

We generate enormous amounts of data of genomic, chemical, taxonomic, pharmacological,

Dealing with environmental issues, the first question is the preparation of environmental databases, our "clouds"- the crucial initial step. What "standard" environment will be suitable to monitor long-term changes? Climatic changes being *global* (temperature rises, ocean acidification etc.) and heavily influenced by human activities, one can only define a study zone as representative of a "standard environment" if it is not *locally* impacted by *direct* human interference (habitat destruction, introduction of alien species, chemical and microbiological pollution…). Fluctuations in parameters of interest must not be subjected to amplitudes higher than those of experimental (read: impacted) study zones, and sampling must be large and statistically significant for the "standard" database to be robust and reliable enough to evidence mild to severe changes in same parameters from experimental study zones. This applies not only to physico-chemical parameters, but also to genomics, transcriptomics or metabolomics metadata (e.g. microbial metagenomics). We need markers within variables, sentinel species within populations, signatures within metabolomes, early responses within complete tran‐ scriptomic repertoires, and so on. Some advocate the use of artificial biological systems, a synthetic biology approach, to standardize sampling procedures. Whole-area imaging can make use of drones that interfere very little with wildlife and biological processes. Coupled with appropriate mathematical tools, automation can be achieved and time-dependent

Thus, whether comparing experimental vs. control areas, or monitoring the evolution of the same locality in time, or analyzing *connectivity*, enormous amounts of data are being generated that need trimming, arranging, cross-checking to be usefully interpreted. And beyond assessing the evolution of a situation, we need to predict, for example, the degradation in the biodiversity of impacted areas if no corrective action is taken. Neural networks that are "educated" by so-called genetic algorithms are currently very successfully exploited, in economics, in business, and in forensic science, to open what is known as "windows of opportunities" (to seize, but also to take corrective measures). These were created by scientists to treat scientific questions in the first place! Beyond our biosphere's apparent complexity, what it contains are quantitatively and qualitatively finite entities, subjected to predictable dynamics. There is no reason not to apply these analytical methods to create ready-to-use tools legislation can rely upon to regulate the appropriation of natural resources: water, wood, sand, fossil fuel, minerals… and wildlife. In the same way as DNA tests are used to help solve

restored no matter what.

biotechnological value that can be better analyzed.

evolution of e.g. natural processes can be predicted.

environments?

If there are no simple replacement solutions in most cases, perhaps revisiting global commer‐ cial practices, promoting local products and values and favoring educational resources (preferably non-virtual) centered on the practical resolution of local issues, will help establish respectable ethics and restore some dignity.
