Biodiversity signifies a healthy environment and the ability of ecosystems to sustain their life support processes that provide the fundamental basis for human welfare. For example, the rainforest is a type of complex ecosystem – it contains animals and plants that are mutually dependent on one another, but that also ensure the foundations for human life. The vast numbers of trees take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen, thereby providing the means for humans to survive. Humans would be unable to live without the healthy operation of this ecosystem.
The communities of living creatures have highly complicated functional relations among themselves and with their environments. Through these relations, the important ecological processes such as water circulation, soil formation, and energy flow are generated. These processes supply the support systems necessary for the species’ communities and thus create a critical interdependency. The sustainable development approach that is so often advocated in our society rests upon the preservation of this interdependency.
Biodiversity is a crucial environmental issue, because in the last century climate change, pollution, and excessive and unsustainable use of natural resources have damaged biodiversity so severely that the situation is now a threat to human life. The deforestation programmes in the rainforests are reducing the environment’s ability to take in carbon dioxide, and our consumption of fish threatens to wipe out this food source completely.
Useful Websites
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/worldmap/
World Map indicating important areas of biodiversity that need to be preserved
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/biodiversity/
Government action on biodiversity
Latest news on biodiversity and charities involved in the issue