Discuss About The Definition Essential Biodiversity Variables.
Biodiversity is the short form of ‘Biological diversity’ which indicates the variability of life forms on Earth. The concept of biodiversity incudes the varieties of species of plants, animals and microorganisms, along with the various ecosystems of the planet such as rain forests, water systems, deserts, coral reefs, etc. that support the life forms (Schmeller et al. 2017). Loss of biodiversity means extinction of species, harm to the habitats of plants and animals, and disruptions in ecosystems.
Apart from natural causes such as cyclones, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. that disrupt the habitats of life forms, activities of humans have the largest negative impact on the biodiversity. The researchers have reported that human activity has caused the environment to change irreversibly and deeply. The environmentally adverse human activities include direct exploitation of natural resources, destruction of habitats, changing the biogeochemical cycles through industrial activity, etc (Whitehead, Kujala, and Wintle 2017). The environmental threats to biodiversity can be concluded with the following factors.
Change and loss of the habitats: Transferring plant and animal species from its naturally occurring environment to other locations can not only increase the risk of loss of species but also can destroy the eco-system associated with the plant or animal.
Introduction of genetically modified organisms: Dislocation of new species into a particular area can cause imbalance to the ecological system.
Pollution: This is a manmade element of environment. The emissions and effluents from industrial activity create an unnatural and harmful surrounding that increases the risks of loss of biodiversity (Rieuwerts 2017). The presence of harmful chemicals and materials creates an artificial environment that is detrimental to the natural ecosystem.
Climate change: The increased temperature on the earth’s surface cause the loss of biodiversity as the many ecosystem and species are sensitive to their physical and biological surroundings. For example, the coral reefs cannot survive if temperature of the ocean rises above certain limit (Adipudi, Beernink, Lakey, and Zarzuela 2017).
Exhaustion of resources: when humans capture and harvest the natural resources with activities such as hunting, fishing, farming, gathering, etc. from a renewable natural resource in a particular area, the respective natural resources get depleted. The faster rate of harvest causes the depletion of resources.
There are several societal causes that adversely affect the biodiversity. Some of the major causes include demographic changes, social inequality and poverty, inadequate public policies, macroeconomic policies, and social and economic developmental changes.
Demography: The researchers have identified a relationship between human population size, growth and density and loss of biodiversity. As the human population increases, he need for land and natural resources increases causing a displacement of biodiversity. The demand for increased food production, infrastructure for housing, public utilities such as roads, bridges, etc., cause human encroachment into ecological systems. Patterns of industrial production and human consumption are other important causes of loss of biodiversity.
Poverty: When communities have limited paths to sustenance, they tend to depend on the consumption or exploitation of biodiversity. Lack of income and sources of sustenance cause the people to look for short term survival resources and sacrifice the long term care for their natural environment (Lynch, Stretesky and Long 2017). The poor farmers, hunters, gatherers, fishermen, nomads, etc. use natural resources to survive which has adverse effect on the environment.
Public Policy: Irresponsible policies that disregard biodiversity and encourage economic activities for financial gain is another socio-political factor for environmental degradation (Prato and Herath 2017). For example, policies related to tourism, agriculture, water mining, energy production, telecommunication, etc. sometime are not sensitive to consequences on biodiversity.
Government and regulatory Standpoint: Many government departments work in silos and fail to incorporate environmental values in their decisions and programs. Most departments focus on their goals and pursue their economic purposes than consider the underlying environmental concerns.
Most of the economic policy decision makers have not been valuing the role of ecosystem in the pursuit of achieving monetary gains. The policy makers are just beginning to recognize that ecosystem is valuable to all of us (Carver and Sullivan 2017). The classical economics has been promoting the idea to exploit the acre resources to gain higher value from the consumers. The scientific research has identified the value of biodiversity on the quality of life of the citizens.
As per economics angle, ecosystems and biodiversity is a public good. And, placing a value on any public good is complex process, especially on biodiversity. As the link between a public good and the quality of life of people is less comprehensible, economic activity often bring harm to the public good. However, the individual organizations, households and governments, have begun to include biodiversity into the cost benefit analysis of the economic activity. The governments and organizations have started to include environmental auditing and accounting in their economic evaluations. The organizations have begun to include costs required to conserve environments which includes biodiversity also (Carver and Sullivan 2017). Considerable costs are encountered in the process of protecting ecosystems. In appreciation of these costs, the cost of producing and servicing the customers have gone high which reflects in the GDP growth as well as the consumption pattern of the consumers. The higher cost paid by the consumers is used to preserve the environment.
There are many ethical reasons that contribute to the loss of biodiversity. One of the major ethical aspects that contribute to harm to biodiversity is the human tendency to modify the environment to benefit human conditions and disregard the diversity in the process (Apostolopoulou and Adams 2017). Even if humans are aware that biodiversity is essential for wellbeing of the earth’s inhabitants and for the short terms gains, humans exploit the environmental systems. The intrinsic value of the biodiversity is disregarded to achieve the personal benefits. Some of the unethical practices that lead to loss of biodiversity include the following.
Extensive deforestation intended to use the land for profitable agriculture is one of the unethical practice by humans (Ives and Bekessy 2015). This activity not only directly causes the loss of biodiversity but also destroys the habitats of thousands of species. The human activity of agriculture, mining, industrialization, urbanizations, etc., displaces many of the floras and fauna of a region.
Second unethical practice is the fragmentation of the habitats for the economic benefits. For example, humans introduce invasive species to control the apparent menace from the animals to protect the agriculture. For example the over use of bee keeping, displaces other species of insects from the environment. Third is the animal and tree poaching for economic gains are second highest unethical activity. This practice directly affects the loss of biodiversity. Many of the species are endangered and run the risk of extinction due to animal poaching.
There are many theoretical explanations to the unethical practices of humans with respect to loss of biodiversity. However, there are cultural communities who practice the preservation of the biodiversity. The theories behind both the practices are discussed here.
Anthropocentricism: It is an approach that represents the superiority of human existence and is closely related to ethics of loss of biodiversity. This theory suggests that due to the indoctrination of the idea that human are superior to the other life forms and have the capacity to conquer the nature, the human communities have been practicing the exploitation of ecosystems without considering the its harmful consequences (Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina 2015). The communities that exploited nature did not even considered as their practice as unethical. The anthropocentric theory suggests that all animals and plants are instrumental for existence and benefit of human existence. Humans have the natural right to exploit the natural resources of the world. The theological interpretation of human supremacy has caused many communities to practice cultures that negated biodiversity.
Biocentrism: According to this theory, all life forms in the planet have the right to live and are worthy for existence. Depending on the functionalities they play in the total ecosystem, each species have relative value. There are and were communities around the world that practiced bio centric ideals. Many of the species are not extinct because of their cultural practices and reverence to life forms (Martin, Maris and Simberloff 2016). The communities that practice biocentrism have morals that give space to all life and the community members of such culture allocate their resources to all the vital life forms. Rather than quantifying the value of biodiversity, the people who practice biocentrism often place absolute value on the environment. As an antidote to anthropocentrism, the bio centric principles are gaining momentum in recent era.
Many business leaders are aware of the global problems of biodiversity loss and degradation in ecosystem but it is often not perceived as a problem of business (Reade, Thorp, Goka, Wasbauer, and McKenna 2015). Even though many businesses consider that they are unrelated to biodiversity, a close examination indicate that most business depend on the ecosystems and biodiversity. Loss of biodiversity is threat as well offers opportunities to business. Some of the threats and opportunities are discussed below.
Many of the primary industries such as natural extraction, forestry, farming, fishing, etc. are under threat because of the diminishing resources and the increasing demand. The business risks can be classified in the following manner and the associated business operations are indicated below.
Physical threats: because of the reduced resources, the business that depend on the raw materials from the ecosystem will be affected through reduced productivity, increased cost of resources and frequent disruptions in operation (Van Dover et al. 2017).
Regulatory and Legal threats: The governments across the globe are employing restraints on the use of natural resources, hence the businesses that depend on natural resources are often restricted to use land and resources, have increased chance of being litigated, and are liable to pay higher compensation for the use.
Market threats: Because of the increased awareness among the consumers regarding the environmental sustainability, consumers are changing their preferences and the customer requirements are frequently changing.
Others threats: There are other threats to business that are related to biodiversity such as risk to reputation, restrictions to supply chain and the investor confidences.
Along with presenting a business with threats, the loss of biodiversity opens up many opportunities. Companies that source materials from sustainable sources are likely to be surviving in the market. Companies that plan their operations without negatively impacting the environment and conserving the natural heritage are likely to be accepted in the market (Wunder et al 2018). The new generation businesses such as responsible tourism, non- invasive civil construction, creation of green building, organic farming, etc. are some of the opportunities.
There are many approaches emerging in many parts of the world to minimize and eradicate the loss of biodiversity (Wunder et al 2018). Agriculture is one of the areas where the business managers can employ the schemes that increase biodiversity and ecosystem. About one third of the available land on earth is used for agriculture, and that proportion cannot be increased any further. The demand for food also increases as the demographics expand. The scientists and practitioners are looking for ways to improve the agricultural productivity while maintaining the ecological balance (Rockström et al. 2017).
The effective management of agricultural biodiversity is critical in meeting emerging food needs and maintaining sources of other goods and services from the agricultural ecosystems. It is possible to recreate the biodiversity systems.
References
Adipudi, S., Beernink, E., Lakey, A. and Zarzuela, K., 2017. Impacts of Climate Change: Coral Reef Biodiversity.
Apostolopoulou, E. and Adams, W.M., 2017. Biodiversity offsetting and conservation: reframing nature to save it. Oryx, 51(1), pp.23-31.
Carver, L. and Sullivan, S., 2017. How economic contexts shape calculations of yield in biodiversity offsetting. Conservation Biology, 31(5), pp.1053-1065.
Ives, C.D. and Bekessy, S.A., 2015. The ethics of offsetting nature. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 13(10), pp.568-573.
Lynch, M.J., Stretesky, P.B. and Long, M.A., 2017. Blaming the poor for biodiversity loss: a political economic critique of the study of poaching and wildlife trafficking. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 25(3), pp.263-275.
Martin, J.L., Maris, V. and Simberloff, D.S., 2016. The need to respect nature and its limits challenges society and conservation science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(22), pp.6105-6112.
Pan, J., Chen, Y., Zhang, H., Bao, M. and Zhang, K., 2016. Strategic options to address climate change. In Climate and Environmental Change in China: 1951–2012 (pp. 129-137). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Prato, T. and Herath, G., 2017. Role of multi-criteria decision making in natural resource management. In Using multi-criteria decision analysis in natural resource management (pp. 17-26). Routledge.
Reade, C., Thorp, R., Goka, K., Wasbauer, M. and McKenna, M., 2015. Invisible compromises: global business, local ecosystems, and the commercial bumble bee trade. Organization & Environment, 28(4), pp.436-457.
Rieuwerts, J., 2017. The elements of environmental pollution. Routledge
Rockström, J., Williams, J., Daily, G., Noble, A., Matthews, N., Gordon, L., Wetterstrand, H., DeClerck, F., Shah, M., Steduto, P. and de Fraiture, C., 2017. Sustainable intensification of agriculture for human prosperity and global sustainability. Ambio, 46(1), pp.4-17.
Schmeller, D.S., Mihoub, J.B., Bowser, A., Arvanitidis, C., Costello, M.J., Fernandez, M., Geller, G.N., Hobern, D., Kissling, W.D., Regan, E. and Saarenmaa, H., 2017. An operational definition of essential biodiversity variables. Biodiversity and Conservation, 26(12), pp.2967-2972.
Shoreman-Ouimet, E. and Kopnina, H., 2015. Culture and conservation: Beyond anthropocentrism. Routledge.
Whitehead, A.L., Kujala, H. and Wintle, B.A., 2017. Dealing with cumulative biodiversity impacts in strategic environmental assessment: A new frontier for conservation planning. Conservation letters, 10(2), pp.195-204.
Wunder, S., Brouwer, R., Engel, S., Ezzine-de-Blas, D., Muradian, R., Pascual, U. and Pinto, R., 2018. From principles to practice in paying for nature’s services. Nature Sustainability, 1(3), p.145.
Van Dover, C.L., Ardron, J.A., Escobar, E., Gianni, M., Gjerde, K.M., Jaeckel, A., Jones, D.O.B., Levin, L.A., Niner, H.J., Pendleton, L. and Smith, C.R., 2017. Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining. Nature Geoscience, 10(7), p.464.
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