Biodiversity

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UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) definition of biodiversity

‘Biological diversity’ means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.”

Definition

“Biological diversity is a measure of life’s compositional variation across different levels of organization—genome, population, species, and ecosystems—and its changing state over dimensions of space and time” (Gonzalez et al., 2023, p. 3)

Aspects Included

  • Ecosystem diversity

  • Species diversity - diversity of living forms and species (animals and plants)

  • Genetic diversity - diversity of individuals within a species

  • Functional diversity

    • different types of diversity all play a key role for holding/maintaining key ecosystem functions in the face of large-scale environmental and climate change. Ecologists refer to this as functional redundancy, and it is one of the core means of ensuring the resilience of the ecosystems on which humans depend.

  • Response Diversity

    • Variation in responses of species performing the same function
      • Crucial for resilience

  • Species richness

  • Biotic interactions

Biodiversity Loss

10 to 100x higher extinction rate than in the past

the current rate of species extinctions is estimated to be at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years and is accelerating (24)

1 million species threatened, and 10% of genetic diversity may have been lost already

Of an estimated 8 million plant and animal species, around 1million are threatened with extinction (16), and over 10% of genetic diversity of plants and animals may have been lost over the past 150 years (23).

Paper - Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries by Richardson et al 2023

Key Drivers of Loss

According to IPBES (in order of signifcance)

  1. Land/sea use change
  2. Direct exploitation
  3. Climate change
  4. Pollution
  5. Invasive alien species

Key sectors driving BD loss

“In its 2019 Global Assessment report, IPBES reviews what sectors have constituted the most important direct drivers of NCP loss. Its broad conclusions are as follows (IPBES, 2019c): — “Fisheries have the largest footprint − with all of industrial extraction, aquaculture and mariculture, and the small fisheries critical for the livelihoods of millions (well established).” — “Agriculture, including grazing, has immense impacts upon terrestrial ecosystems, with important differences depending upon an enterprise’s intensity and size (well established).” — “Industrial roundwood harvests have risen, while bioenergy use rose dramatically in the rural areas of poorer regions, with some sustainable forest management (well established).” — “Harvesting wild plants and animals from land-and seascapes supports the livelihoods of a large share of the globe’s population, raising sustainability concerns (well established).” — “Mining has risen dramatically, with big impacts on terrestrial biodiversity hotspots and global oceans, most in developing areas with weaker regulation (established but incomplete).” — “Dams, roads, and cities have strong local negative impacts on nature, yet they also can have positive spillovers associated to increased efficiency and innovation (well established).” — “Tourism has risen dramatically with huge impacts on nature overall, higher impacts for the higher-end options, and mixed outcomes from nature-based options (well established).” — “Both airborne and seaborne transportation of goods and people has risen dramatically, causing both increased pollution and a significant rise in invasive species (well established).” — “Restoration can offset current degradation levels, with varied intensities and outcomes, although global initiatives have focused mostly on our forests (established but incomplete).” — “Illegal extraction – including fishing, forestry and poaching –adds to unsustainability, yet is fostered by markets (local, global) and poor governance (established but incomplete).”” (Chandellier and Malacain, 2021, p. 46) (pdf) key sectors for BD loss

Features

Subject to tipping points & regime shifts such as:

  • clear lakes can become turbid and dominated by algal blooms
  • coral reefs become overgrown by macroalgae
  • fisheries collapse owing to overexploitation
  • tropical forests shift to savannah-type ecosystems under high fire intensity

Value of Biodiversity

This functional value of biodiversity is often poorly understood and hugely undervalued.190,191 Biodiversity enhances ecosystem services necessary for human wellbeing, including food production, pollination, pest control, heat regulation, carbon sinks, and moisture feedback for rainfall. Nutritional quality, protective attributes, and flavours of most plant foods is a function of evolutionary interactions between species

From Paper - Food in the Anthropocene the EAT–Lancet Commission

Biodiversity plays significant roles in buffering shocks and extreme events, and in regime shift dynamics

From Paper - Our Future in the Anthropocene - Folke 2021

Provides Ecosystem Services

Biodiversity underpins many public goods such as clean air, pollination, recreation, and stress relief

Insurance value of biodiversity-nature

double function:

  1. buffering (reduce temporal variability)
  2. performance-enhancing (increase temporal mean) these are not always synergistic, but may also be subject to tradeoffs (at least in the short term)

“Biodiversity can affect not only the temporal variability of ecosystem properties, but also their temporal mean. This is why biological insurance theory identified two ways in which biodiversity can enhance ecosystem functioning in fluctuating environments: (i)a‘buffering effect’, i.e. an increased temporal stability or reduced variability of aggregate ecosystem properties that arises from species’ differential responses to environmental variations (Yachi & Loreau, 1999; Loreau, 2010; Loreau & de Mazancourt, 2013), and (ii)a ‘performance-enhancing effect’, i.e. an increase in the mean level of ecosystem properties, which occurs when the bestperforming species are favoured under each environmental condition (Table 1) (Yachi & Loreau, 1999).” (Loreau et al., 2021, p. 2334) (pdf)

tree diversity in forestry industry

“While a growing body of research is demonstrating the ecological importance of tree diversity, the economic implications of tree diversity have received relatively limited attention. Consequently, translating the concepts of biological insurance theory into operational and economically motivated forestry decisions remains challenging. Forestry has long focused on maximising short-term profits for landowners while maintaining long-term productivity. As such, forest management has a long history of favouring monocultures, which were thought to provide higher yields than do mixed stands. During the past 20 years, however, a number of studies applied portfolio theory to forest management and showed the advantages of diversification to promote economic returns on timber production and reduce risk (Knoke et al., 2005; Knoke, 2008; Neuner, Beinhofer & Knoke, 2013; Dragicevic, Lobianco & Leblois, 2016). Risk is typically calculated as the standard deviation of the economic return over the planning horizon and is associated with the volatility of timber prices or the unpredictable occurrence of severe natural disturbances.” (Loreau et al., 2021, p. 2344) (pdf)

Resources:

Dasgupta Review - Economics of Biodiversity Biodiversity metrics Biodiversity monitoring Global Biodiversity Framework Ecosystem Services

UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) definition of biodiversity

“‘Biological diversity’ means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.”

“Biological diversity is a measure of life’s compositional variation across different levels of organization—genome, population, species, and ecosystems—and its changing state over dimensions of space and time” (Gonzalez et al., 2023, p. 3)

Aspects Included

  • Functional diversity
    • Key for resilience of ecosystems
    • different types of diversity all play a key role for holding/maintaining key ecosystem functions in the face of large-scale environmental and climate change. Ecologists refer to this as functional redundancy, and it is one of the core means of ensuring the resilience of the ecosystems on which humans depend.
  • Genetic diversity
  • Species richness
  • Biotic interactions

Drivers of Loss

According to IPBES (in order of signifcance)

  1. Land/sea use change
  2. Direct exploitation
  3. Climate change
  4. Pollution
  5. Invasive alien species

Features

Subject to Tipping Point effects such as:

  • clear lakes can become turbid and dominated by algal blooms
  • coral reefs become overgrown by macroalgae
  • fisheries collapse owing to overexploitation
  • tropical forests shift to savannah-type ecosystems under high fire intensity

Provides Ecosystem Services

Biodiversity underpins many public goods such as clean air, pollination, recreation, and stress relief

How to Measure it?

Projects

Graph View

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