Do you like clean air, fresh water, nutritious food? If you answered yes (aka if you are a human being), biodiversity is important to you. We sometimes forget it, but Earth is not just “our” planet, it’s the home of millions of species. Each species has its own role in ecosystem functioning, no matter whether it is an animal, plant, funghi or microscopic bacterium. Humans are on the list too, but unfortunately we are not doing much good to promote ecosystem health. Singlehandedly, we are threatening the existence of countless species, including humankind itself. Even if we don’t give a hoot about other species, we at least owe it to ourselves to protect biodiversity and it’s crucial role in sustaining our survival.
What exactly is biodiversity?
Biodiversity is like Shrek… I mean it’s like an onion… I mean … it has layers. It starts with genes, then populations, species, communities and finally there is the whole ecosystem. So basically, biodiversity includes every single living thing on Earth. Idk, but to me it sounds like it’s kind of a big deal.
Why do we care?
Like I said, every species has a function in an ecosystem. Every individual’s primary function is of course to ensure its own survival, but often directly or indirectly, the actions of one species contribute to the survival of other species. Species depend on species depend on species; when one population experiences some changes, the whole ecosystem could be affected. Ecosystems in that way are a bit like soap operas; everyone somehow has relations with everyone and every action has the potential to lead to disproportionately dramatic consequences.
We as humans should care about this because we rely on “ecosystem services” for our survival. Thanks to biodiversity, we have food, water, even drugs. Thanks to biodiversity, we get to experience the beauty of flowers, animals, landscapes. Professor Edward O Wilson nailed the hammer on the head when he wrote “Each higher organism is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, a Bach fugue, or any other great work,”. We can’t replace organisms once they have gone extinct, so we should do everything we can to prevent biodiversity loss.
How bad is it?
I’m not gonna lie, it’s quite bad. The extinction rate of species is 1000 times higher than it was pre-human invasion. We have wiped out a shocking 60% of animal populations since 1970. Of the 8 million estimated animal and plant species on Earth, one million are at risk of extinction. More than 40% of amphibian species, more than a third of all marine mammals and 30% of reef corals are threatened. If the world warms by just 2°C, 5% of all species are at risk. If the world warms by 4.3°C, that figure increases to 16%.
What causes biodiversity loss?
Species come and go, that’s natural. But the rate at which extinctions are happening now, is mainly due to another cause. Take a wild guess, it starts with h and ends with umans.
Climate change
Natural selection has ensured that organisms with the best adaptations to their environment survive and persist. Unfortunately, environments are now changing at unnatural rates due to man-made climate change so many species may not be able to keep up because they are no longer adapted to the brand-new environments.
Habitat degradation/destruction
You’ve probably noticed that Earth is pretty big. One would think that there is plenty of space for everyone, but somehow humans have claimed more than a third of the entire world’s land surface for crop or livestock production. The habitats of thousands of species have had to make way for a few resources such as cows, palm oil and soy. Humans destroy 18 million acres of forest every year. We can’t even begin to calculate how many animals, plants and funghi have died because of these brutal home invasions.
Overexploitation
It’s no news that we have overfished our oceans and hunted vulnerable species to the point of extinction more than we can be proud of. Ninety percent of commercial fish stocks areoverfished or fished to their absolute maximum. Overhunting has been responsible for 23% of extinctions since the 17th century. Poachers remove tens of millions of animals from nature to be sold in the illegal wildlife trade. For example: there are more tigers in captivity in the US (hi Joe Exotic) than in the entire wild world.
Invasive species
By now we’ve seen that people like to meddle with nature. Sometimes they think it is a fantastic idea to introduce non-native species into a new habitat. Time and again, these missions fail terribly: the invasive species threaten the local wildlife, disrupt whole ecosystems and become incontrollable. Hmmm.. sounds kind of familiar to.. ah yes, humans.
Concluding remarks
Okay, so clearly we are well on our way to destroy the diversity of life on this planet. It’s about time for us to take action, before one of the species we destroy is humankind. For us as individuals, it is (hopefully) easy to see that biodiversity loss is a global problem. Most politicians have unfortunately not got the (bio)diversity memo, so let’s raise awareness, vote for initiatives that fight climate change, habitat degradation, overexploitation and the introduction of invasive species, and avoid unsustainably sourced resources like fish and palm oil!
Generation Earth 