Loss of biodiversity has many long term effects.
Biodiversity provides various goods - such as plants and animals - that individuals need in order to earn an income and secure sustainable livelihoods.
If ecosystems deteriorate to an unstable level, the resulting problems can be very expensive, economically, to reverse. According to IUCN, the World Conservation Union, the monetary value of goods and services provided by ecosystems is estimated to amount to around US$33 trillion per year. To put that bluntly, that's around US$33,000,000,000,000 a year.
But it's not only money we have to worry about. We harvest an estimated 50,000-70,000 plant species for traditional and modern medicine worldwide. Without these plant species to harvest, many lives are at stake. Plants and animals produce defense mechanisms. These are often chemicals used to either repel predators or to aid in elimination of their competition. These chemicals are vitally important to humans because many cures for human diseases have been found within these compounds. If a species is lost due to our interference in its ecosystem, we also lose the ability to study it for possible benefits to mankind.
It's also about food. Meat from wild animals forms a critical contribution to food sources in many different countries, especially those with high levels of poverty and food insecurity. As well as this, 100 million metric tonnes of aquatic life, including fish, molluscs and crustaceans are taken from the wild every year. The continued loss of forests and the destruction of watersheds reduce the quality and availability of water supplied for household use and agriculture.
The Earth also provides us with natural services that we often take for granted. These natural services are usually described as Ecosystem Services. These include water, soil formation and protection, pollution breakdown and absorption, climate stability and recovery from natural disasters. With the loss of biodiversity we have no access to these natural services. For example, many communities have experienced more natural disasters, but because of the loss of mangroves and coral reefs, which are excellent natural buffers against floods and storms, coastal communities have increasingly suffered from severe floods.
Extinction is a natural process that has occurred for millions of years. You may be wondering why does it deserve so much attention now? The problem is that the rate of extinction has increased dramatically in recent years due to our impact as humans. It if current environmental practices are not changed, estimates put loss of biodiversity in the next century between 25 and 50%. That is 1/4 and 1/2 of ALL the world's species gone FOREVER within 100 years.
If ecosystems deteriorate to an unstable level, the resulting problems can be very expensive, economically, to reverse. According to IUCN, the World Conservation Union, the monetary value of goods and services provided by ecosystems is estimated to amount to around US$33 trillion per year. To put that bluntly, that's around US$33,000,000,000,000 a year.
But it's not only money we have to worry about. We harvest an estimated 50,000-70,000 plant species for traditional and modern medicine worldwide. Without these plant species to harvest, many lives are at stake. Plants and animals produce defense mechanisms. These are often chemicals used to either repel predators or to aid in elimination of their competition. These chemicals are vitally important to humans because many cures for human diseases have been found within these compounds. If a species is lost due to our interference in its ecosystem, we also lose the ability to study it for possible benefits to mankind.
It's also about food. Meat from wild animals forms a critical contribution to food sources in many different countries, especially those with high levels of poverty and food insecurity. As well as this, 100 million metric tonnes of aquatic life, including fish, molluscs and crustaceans are taken from the wild every year. The continued loss of forests and the destruction of watersheds reduce the quality and availability of water supplied for household use and agriculture.
The Earth also provides us with natural services that we often take for granted. These natural services are usually described as Ecosystem Services. These include water, soil formation and protection, pollution breakdown and absorption, climate stability and recovery from natural disasters. With the loss of biodiversity we have no access to these natural services. For example, many communities have experienced more natural disasters, but because of the loss of mangroves and coral reefs, which are excellent natural buffers against floods and storms, coastal communities have increasingly suffered from severe floods.
Extinction is a natural process that has occurred for millions of years. You may be wondering why does it deserve so much attention now? The problem is that the rate of extinction has increased dramatically in recent years due to our impact as humans. It if current environmental practices are not changed, estimates put loss of biodiversity in the next century between 25 and 50%. That is 1/4 and 1/2 of ALL the world's species gone FOREVER within 100 years.
Proportion of all assessed species in different threat categories of extinction risk on the IUCN Red List, based on data from 47,677 species.
Source: IUCN, 2010, pie chart compiled by Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) Global Biodiversity Outlook 3,
