Why should we care about biodiversity??
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Answer:
It works at the genetic level, allowing individual species to adapt to changes in the environment. It acts across whole ecosystems, increasing their resilience to environmental changes, such as disease. With such a profound effect across all of life, it should be obvious that we must care about our biodiversity.
In the first instance there are some utilitarian arguments, and they make good sense. Recently there has been an acknowledgement of the value of ecosystems, of which biodiversity is the cornerstone. Ecosystems remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; purify drinking water; take toxins and pollutants out of the environment; provide an array of medicinal products; defend us from natural hazards and disease – the list goes on. Ecosystems are also often viewed in terms of their monetary value, a perspective which can misleadingly imply that they could be replaced by other forms of capital.
The fact is, Earth is our life support system, and by allowing species to go extinct, or upsetting the balance of species within particular ecosystems, we start to disrupt and destroy this system. Human ‘development’ is not tied to the extinction of species and destruction of habitats. Indeed, in the long run, quite the opposite is true.
Biodiversity is in some ways akin to a gigantic, dynamic and constantly moving jigsaw, where each piece is constantly changing shape as the environment and the other components of the jigsaw change. Remove a piece, and the knock-on effects can be profound, and even where the reward for conserving a species is not immediately obvious, our understanding of the natural world as being composed of such systems confers a value to each component. For example, the value of a bolt is not really clear until it is understood within the context of an aircraft’s engine.
Whilst nature and biodiversity undoubtedly provide vital economic services or functions, they are fundamental to human wellbeing in other, less utilitarian ways. In many communities nature remains an integral component of culture and belief systems, and even in societies where aspects of culture have long been removed from the natural environment, people still uphold a fundamental emotional connection with wild spaces, which inspire us with a sense of awe and wonder, and their loss still fills most with sadness and melancholy.
Humans can never be totally isolated from nature. But even if we do somehow remove ourselves from the equation, surely other species have the same fundamental rights to survive and prosper on this planet as we do? Each species has evolved to fit into the web of life, but many of these same species are being destroyed in an extinction crisis which is not blind: in the main we know how and why biodiversity is decreasing, and in almost all cases there is something we can do about it. Indeed if we can put even a small fraction of the effort and ingenuity invested in the activities driving this loss of biodiversity into saving these species, then surely we can sustain the amazing diversity of life which has evolved alongside us on this planet. Preserving unique and incredible biodiversity hotspots like Madagascar and allowing species like the Near Threatened tomato frog to continue to thrive for generations to come must surely be a priority for our own and future generations to come.