Climate change, ocean changes, etc resulting from human activities eventually lead to biodiversity loss and extinction.
The United Nations (UN) recently reported about nature’s dangerous decline and its accelerating extinction rate on the report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). I personally, took an interest on this document I found on the UN website because I truly believe that biodiversity is being lost right before our eyes and we will come to a point where our actions cannot be reversed.
Last semester, I took BIOL 2050 4.0, Ecology and I learned a lot about the effects of loss on biodiversity as a result of habitat loss and fragmentation, especially when us humans are the key factor behind it. For example, although deforestation provides us with wood and lumber for paper or building materials, it takes away homes of many species. This negatively impacts species-species interactions as wells as the whole food web as a whole, mainly due to the loss of PLANTS since they are a primary producer. Loss of different species of plants would cause decline in herbivore species which in-turn would decline the biodiversity of species in the top of the food web. This would just be a major disaster!!!
According to IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson, “The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference….Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably”. The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was coordinated and competed by hundreds of experts from over 50 different countries to gather changes in biodiversity over the past five decades.
Findings from the Report
Some findings from the report includes:
- Since 1900, species in most land-based habitats have declined by 20%
- >40% of amphibian species and 33% of marine mammals are threatened
- greater than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016
- 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions
- Urban areas have more than doubled since 1992.
- Plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980 (300-400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, pesticides/fertilizer and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped every year into the world’s waters)
IPBES has predicted that these negative trends in nature will continue past 2050 because of the projected impacts of INCREASING LAND-USE CHANGE, EXPLOITATION OF ORGANISMS and CLIMATE CHANGE.
Five Main Causes Driving Changes in Nature
Click to watch an animated video
- Changes in land (plants) and sea use
- Direct exploitation of organisms
- Climate Change
- Pollution
- Invasive species
What Can We Do?
I also agree with the UN regarding the fact that some policies have to be made in different sectors in order to prevent loss of biodiversity and extinction from getting out of control. In agriculture, we need to start managing pests without using harmful pesticides. Some alternatives can include organic pesticides, biocontrol (using a pest’s natural enemy to get rid of the pest), and polyculture. In marine systems, we can reduce run-off pollutants into oceans and set effective quotas for fisheries. By doing so, this will prevent them from drastically reducing the marine population so that the marine species can still repopulate again. In freshwater systems, we can promote practices to reduce soil erosions, increasing water storage, and reduce sedimentation.
Overall, plants are holding the whole food chain by a thread and when any of the 5 factors drive loss of biodiversity or extinction of various plant species, the rest of the species that either directly or indirectly relying on the plants are going to eventually be doomed!
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 
