5 reasons why biodiversity matters – to human health, the economy and your wellbeing
- 1. Biodiversity ensures health and food security Biodiversity underpins global nutrition and food security. ...
- 2. Biodiversity helps fight disease Higher rates of biodiversity have been linked to an increase in human health. ...
- 4. Biodiversity provides livelihoods Humans derive approximately $125 trillion of value from natural ecosystems each year. ...
- 5. ...
What are three economic benefits of biodiversity?
Economic—biodiversity provides humans with raw materials for consumption and production. Many livelihoods, such as those of farmers, fishers and timber workers, are dependent on biodiversity . Ecological life support— biodiversity provides functioning ecosystems that supply oxygen, clean air and water, pollination of plants, pest control ...
What is biodiversity and why is it important?
Journalist Dan Saladino unveils the work of Harlan and other visionaries in “Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them ... with them as he seeks out these rare and important foods. His evocative descriptions ...
What are the benefits of maintaining biodiversity?
- Biodiversity is critically important to human health, economies and livelihoods.
- Humans have caused the loss of 83% of all wild animals and half of all plants.
- To mark the International Day for Biodiversity, here are five reasons why biodiversity matters to humans – and why we need to protect it.
How do humans affect biodiversity?
Can the New UN Biodiversity Plan Solve it?
- Fortress Conservation. Often promoted as America’s best idea, national parks like Yellowstone, founded in 1872 by then President Ulysses S. ...
- The Sixth Extinction. ...
- ‘It’s Easy for Governments to Draw Lines On a Map’. ...
- Following the Money. ...
- ‘The Continuation of a Painful Process’. ...
Further reading
Plural valuation of nature matters for environmental sustainability and justice by Berta Martin-Lopez, Social-Ecological Systems Institute, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany
Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is essential for the processes that support all life on Earth, including humans. Without a wide range of animals, plants and microorganisms, we cannot have healthy ecosystems.
How does biodiversity help our economy?
1. Biodiversity ensures health and food security. Biodiversity underpins global nutrition and food security.
Why is biodiversity important?
Image: REUTERS/Edgar Su. Biodiversity is critically important to human health, economies and livelihoods. Humans have caused the loss of 83% of all ...
What is the Nature Action Agenda?
The Nature Action Agenda initiative, within the Platform for Accelerating Nature-based Solutions, is an inclusive, multistakeholder movement catalysing economic action to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Dynamic and flourishing natural ecosystems are the foundation for human wellbeing and prosperity.
How much do humans get from ecosystems?
Humans derive approximately $125 trillion of value from natural ecosystems each year. Globally, three out of four jobs are dependent on water while the agricultural sector employs over 60% of the world’s working poor. In the Global South, forests are the source of livelihoods for over 1.6 billion people.
What is biodiverse ecosystem?
Biodiverse ecosystems provide nature-based solutions that buffer us from natural disasters such as floods and storms, filter our water and regenerate our soils. The clearance of over 35% of the world’s mangroves for human activities has increasingly put people and their homes at risk from floods and sea-level rise.
What is the restoration economy?
Although some fear environmental regulation and the safeguarding of nature could threaten businesses, the “restoration economy” – the restoration of natural landscapes –provides more jobs in the United States than most of the extractives sector , with the potential to create even more.
Why are coral reefs important?
Coral reefs are essential to tourism in some parts of the world – but they're disappearing. Image: REUTERS/David Gray/File photo. There is great potential for the economy to grow and become more resilient by ensuring biodiversity. Every dollar spent on nature restoration leads to at least $9 of economic benefits.
What are the benefits of biodiversity?
The four key benefits are: (1) Biodiversity Provides the Natural Resource, (2) Biodiversity Provides the Genetic Resource, (3) Biodiversity Maintains a Stable Ecosystem, and (4) Biodiversity Ensures Optimum Utilization and Conservation of Abiotic Resources in an Ecosystem.
Which region has the richest biodiversity?
Tropical regions are having the richest biodiversity in the world, most of the nutrients are lodged in its biotic community. Due to warm and humid conditions decomposition of organic matter and regeneration of nutrients take place rapidly.
How does vegetation affect soil?
Luxuriant growth of vegetation hinders rapid flow of water, binds soil particles together and prevents soil erosion. Loss of biodiversity reduces the efficiency of this vital machinery which in turn results in rapid losses of nutrients and degradation of soil.
Why are plants important to humans?
The most important contribution of plants is to provide food to ever increasing human population.
What are microbes good for?
Microbes are also good sources of various medicinally important enzymes ( streptokinase and asparginase), toxins (botulin), immunomodulators (Cyclosporin A) etc. Vaccines such as BCG, typhoid, hepatitis B, and alkaloids such as ergot are also derived from some microbes.
How does biodiversity help BC?
BC's biodiversity helps keep these benefits flowing to us, but only as long as the ecosystems continue to be healthy and functioning properly. Unintended interference with the functioning of ecosystems and the species within them can put those benefits at risk. Urban development, resource extraction, construction of transportation corridors ...
Why is biodiversity important to the British Columbia region?
Biodiversity also provides the natural "capital" for the tourism sector that attracts visitors from around the globe to experience "supernatural" British Columbia. Many First Nation communities depend on the sustainable harvesting of biological resources to provide a significant portion of their food and income.
What are some examples of health benefits?
For example, doctors use the saliva of leeches to dissolve dangerous blood clots.
What are the jobs that depend on biological resources?
The jobs of a significant portion of the workforce depend directly on biological resources including agriculture, fishing, forestry, eco-tourism and outdoor recreation. Industries such as forestry, fishing, agriculture and ranching rely on healthy ecosystems and natural processes for their continued viability.
What are the spiritual values of British Columbia?
Spiritual values - For many British Columbians, the diversity of ecosystems and species is a source of emotional, artistic and spiritual inspiration and cultural identity. Many people believe that human society must be built on a respect for all life around us.
Why is biodiversity important?
If that sounds bewilderingly broad, that’s because it is. Biodiversity is the most complex feature of our planet and it is the most vital. “Without biodiversity, there is no future for humanity,” says Prof David Macdonald, at Oxford University.
What are the levels of biodiversity?
More formally, biodiversity is comprised of several levels, starting with genes, then individual species, then communities of creatures and finally entire ecosystems, such as forests or coral reefs , where life interplays with the physical environment. These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years.
What is species extinction?
Species extinction provides a clear but narrow window on the destruction of biodiversity – it is the disappearance of the last member of a group that is by definition rare. But new studies are examining the drop in the total number of animals, capturing the plight of the world’s most common creatures.
How long has biodiversity been habitable?
These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years. A more philosophical way of viewing biodiversity is this: it represents the knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive through the vastly varying environmental conditions Earth has experienced.
Why are wild animals important?
Wild varieties of domesticated animals and crops are also crucial as some will have already solved the challenge of, for example, coping with drought or salty soils. If money is a measure, the services provided by ecosystems are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars – double the world’s GDP.
What is the reality of wildlife?
But the reality is that the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all ultimately rely on biodiversity.
Is biodiversity good for the planet?
If undamaged, this produces a finely balanced, healthy system which contributes to a healthy sustainable planet. The sheer richness of biodiversity also has human benefits. Many new medicines are harvested from nature, such as a fungi that grows on the fur of sloths and can fight cancer.
What are the benefits of biodiversity?
Other benefits of biodiversity include cultural, spiritual and recreational values. Because people evolve with their environments, their history and identity is embedded there. The loss of an entire ecosystem can be socially disassembling.
Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is also key for the continued provision of ecosystems services it provides, which serve both humans and the systems themselves, although the term is largely used in relation to the benefits reaped by us.
What is the largest scale of biodiversity?
Ecosystem diversity. The largest scale of biodiversity generally examined is ecosystem diversity. Ecosystem diversity looks at the number and variability of ecosystems in an area. The earth itself has ecosystem diversity: for example, it has forests, oceans, deserts, wetlands and grasslands. California has prairies, deserts, lakes, forests ...
How can an ecosystem be sustainable?
To be considered sustainable an ecosystem must be able to maintain these processes over time and in the face of external stresses that may occur like fires or pollution. High biodiversity in an ecosystem, that is a large variety of species and genes in the ecosystem contribute to a stronger ecosystem.
What is biodiversity in ecology?
Biodiversity, short for biological diversity refers to the variety of life. It is an approach that looks at the amount of life and the variety of life over an area. That area can be as large as the earth itself or it can be in a very small ecosystem such as the life in and surrounding a patch of moss on a fallen tree trunk.
How is biodiversity measured?
Biodiversity is measured not only by the richness of an area in the number of diverse species living there, but it also considers the evenness of the species . This is because the more equal species are in proportion to each other, the more stable it is because there are not dominant species.
Why are parks important in urban areas?
That is the reason for parks in urban areas. An aesthetic appreciation of biodiversity itself has also been documented. This includes the deep feeling of being interconnected with other species on earth. Nature also provides many opportunities for recreation from ziplining to canoeing.
Find answers to 16 key questions about biodiversity
Introduction What is biodiversity? Why is biodiversity important? How do we measure biodiversity? What is the scale of biodiversity loss? Do new species offset the loss of existing species? Where is most biodiversity loss happening and why? Is the rate of biodiversity loss increasing or decreasing? What is the state of biodiversity in the UK? How do humans affect biodiversity? How does the growing global population and increasing consumption affect biodiversity? How does climate change affect biodiversity? How does deforestation affect biodiversity? What can we do to protect biodiversity? What can I do as an individual to protect biodiversity? Can we allow nature to regenerate without intervention? How do we decide what is worth saving or putting our efforts into protecting? Acknowledgements.
Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is essential for the processes that support all life on Earth, including humans. Without a wide range of animals, plants and microorganisms, we cannot have healthy ecosystems.
