What is Biodiversity?

"Biological diversity", the 'variety of life' describes 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.

The Global Status of Biodiversity

Across the world, issues that affect human lives generally take precedence over issues that affect the lives of animals, plants and the natural environment. It is the human issues that generally dominate politics and usually this is rightly so. However, unless something goes drastically wrong with our planet, people will always be here. It is our animals and plants that we share the planet with that are currently at high risk of being lost forever, or have indeed already been lost as a result of our activities.

Many have described an ecosystem as a brick wall, with each species constituting one brick. If you remove just one brick, the whole wall may crumble. It may not, but you never know at what point the wall will collapse as subsequent bricks are removed. In the same way, we do not know of the knock-on effect of species extinctions until it is too late. We may be able to absorb some, but the removel of species performing a crucial function in the ecosystem may cause the whole structure to collapse, and us as Homo sapiens, right up there at the top of the food chain will be hit the hardest, and yet we were to blame in the first place.

In recognition of the fragility of global biodiversity, world leaders signed an agreement know as the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 which set out clear plans for how we are to safeguard life on Earth.