First of 2 parts
The United Nations and its global partners will grapple with the massive loss of animal and plant species, and how to avoid further extinction, at a major conference that began January 23. Here’s a primer on what, exactly, biodiversity is, and how the UN can help support efforts to enable nature to survive and thrive.
Importance
In simple terms, biodiversity refers to all types of life on earth. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), describes it as “the diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, including plants, animals, bacteria and fungi.”These three levels work together to create life on Earth, in all its complexity.
The diversity of species keep the global ecosystem in balance, providing everything in nature that we, as humans, need to survive including food, clean water, medicine and shelter. Over half of global GDP is strongly dependent on nature. More than one billion people rely on forests for their livelihoods.
Biodiversity is also our strongest natural defense against climate change. Land and ocean ecosystems act as “carbon sinks,” absorbing more than half of all carbon emissions.
Because the first big push of the year to put the UN’s bold plan to protect biodiversity into practice, took place in the Swiss capital, Bern, between January 23 and 25.
Introducing the conference, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, director of the UNEP Law Division, warned that the lack of coordination between the various organizations trying to protect biodiversity is a “critical challenge” that needs to be urgently overcome “as we strive for a world living in harmony with nature by 2050.” A key aim of the conference will be to solve that problem, by pulling together the various initiatives taking place across the world.
Is there a crisis?
Yes. It’s very serious, and it needs to be urgently tackled.
Starting with the natural and land sea carbon sinks mentioned above: they are being degraded: examples include the deforestation of the Amazon and the disappearance of salt marshes and mangrove swamps which remove large amounts of carbon.
The way we use the land and sea is one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss. Since 1990, around 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses. Agricultural expansion continues to be the main driver of deforestation, forest degradation and forest biodiversity loss.
Other major drivers of species decline include overfishing, and the introduction of invasive alien species (species that have entered and established themselves in the environment outside their natural habitat, causing the decline or even extinction of native species and negatively affecting ecosystems).
These activities, UNEP has shown, are pushing around a million species of plants and animals towards extinction. They range from the critically endangered South China tiger and Indonesian orangutans, to supposedly “common” animals and plants, such as giraffes and parrots, as well as oak trees cacti and seaweed. This is the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs. UN News
(To be continued)