The United Nations has proclaimed
May 22, The International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB) to increase
understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. The Day’s 2020 edition is
expected to be relevant to raising awareness and building momentum.
Globally, around 25% of all animal
and plant species are threatened with extinction. This year the International
Day for Biological Diversity is targeted towards raising awareness and building
momentum on the importance of biodiversity as well as global issues on
biodiversity loss, in the lead up to the United Nations Biodiversity
Conference.
Consequences of Biodiversity loss
There is considerable evidence
that contemporary biodiversity declines will lead to subsequent declines in
ecosystem functioning and ecosystem stability. Biodiversity experiments have
tested whether biodiversity declines will influence ecosystem functioning or
stability by manipulating some components of biodiversity, such as the number
of species, and measuring various types of ecosystem functioning or stability.
These studies have been conducted in the lab, grassland, forest, marine, and
freshwater ecosystems. From these studies, it is clear that ecosystem
functioning often depends on species richness, species composition, and
functional group richness and can also depend on species evenness and genetic
diversity. Furthermore, stability often depends on species richness and species
composition. Thus, contemporary changes in biodiversity will likely lead to
subsequent changes in ecosystem properties. Further investigation at larger
spatiotemporal scales in managed ecosystems is needed to improve our
understanding of the consequences of biodiversity declines.
Ways to protect Biodiversity
- Limiting deforestation.
- Reducing the artificialisation of natural environments and preserve natural areas as much as possible;
- Reduce air pollution (by limiting our use of transport and our energy consumption, by switching to renewable energies).
- Fighting global warming by creating regulations for activities that contribute to the greenhouse effect.
- Making changes in the way industrial agriculture works and using more agroecology methods.