Davtra's Blog

Biodiversity: Its Importance and the Global Conservation Resource Allocation Problem

Can We Save the Natural Environment?

Published on 25 October 2009 for educational purposes. By David M. Tran. All references removed. Email me to request for complete references: david@personal.davtra.net

Realisation of biodiversity importance prompted calls for an increase in conservation efforts and the reverse erosion of biodiversity. The hotspots strategy identifies regions that are high in species endemism and habitat destruction, and directs conservation efforts and resources towards these regions. However, this strategy provides a static assessment for resource allocation and distribution. Wilson and his research team developed a new framework that addresses this issue. This paper discusses the importance of biodiversity, how biodiversity contributes to the well-being of humanity, and the resource allocation problem.

Biodiversity is the variety of organisms living within an area. It is the variety of life including its ecosystems, species, populations and genes. The primary driver of the decline in biodiversity is habitat loss and fragmentation of natural ecosystems. Human activities towards the land and waters have already caused a loss of biodiversity. Even greater losses will occur if humanity continues its unsustainable uses of natural resources.

Urbanisation is arguably affecting biodiversity to decline. In 2007, 88.6 per cent of Australia’s population resided in urban areas. According to environmental experts, human activities have driven species to extinction at rates perhaps 1,000 times the natural rate. In 2006, 639 threatened and endangered species were recorded in Australia, and in 2008, an additional 149 endangered species, totalling 788, were recorded. Conservation of biodiversity is necessary as its ecosystems provide the continuum of free, essential services that maintain life on Earth.

An ecosystem is the complex of living organisms, along with their physical environment and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space. An ecosystem can be categorised into biotic constituents including all living members, and abiotic constituents consisting of sunlight, minerals, climate, soil, water, and all other non-living elements. Examples of ecosystems include forests, deserts, woodlands, heathlands, the ocean, and grasslands.

Ecosystem services are benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. This includes: providing goods such as foods and medicines; regulating services such as flood, purification of air and waters, and disease control; cultural services such as recreational and spiritual; and supporting services such as nutrient recycling. The disruption of healthy ecosystems can have catastrophic effects. For example, if natural pest control ceased, there could be major crop failures. If the carbon cycle was disrupted, rapid climate change could threaten whole societies.

Ecosystems purify air and waters. Forest canopies function as filters that help regulate compositions of the atmosphere and purify the air. Pollution particles from coal and oil, cement production, lime-kiln operation and agriculture activities are captured by forest canopies. Wetlands absorb and recycle nutrients from human settlements. Plants, microbe and the sediment process intake nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Wetlands function as filters that help remove nutrients and toxins from water.

Ecosystems are complex and large. Ecologists and taxonomists find it practically impossible to record every single species. With respect to complexity, we often do not know which species are required for the ecosystem services to work, the numbers they must be present in, and whether there are ‘keystone’ species. Australia contains around 70 per cent of global species. Many of Australia’s diverse environments do not occur anywhere else in the world; they are endemic. Australian ecologists do not know the quantity of plants and animals; however, recent estimates suppose around 0.5 million species, from a global total of, perhaps, ten to fifteen million. The Australian environment is comprised of 47 per cent invertebrates (30 per cent have been named), 42 per cent fungi (highly uncertain; ten per cent named), nine per cent plants (70 per cent named), and one per cent vertebrates (90 per cent named). These figures demonstrate the highly uneven knowledge and the impracticability of recording every biota.

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) was an American ecologist. He argued forcefully for wilderness preservation. His work and efforts resulted in the establishment of the first wilderness area. He recognised that large protected areas are to be kept free from human activities, but realised that relying solely on acquiring protected lands is not sufficient for conservation. Today, ecologists have arrived at the same conclusion.

A region that is high in species endemism and comprises of habitat destruction is termed a ‘hotspot’. The term and hotspot identification strategy was introduced by the British ecologist Norman Myers. Myers and his team describe the benefits of the expanded hotspots strategy. Identifying hotspots can assist the global conservation community to identify priorities in supporting all species under threat at the least cost. The identification of hotspots enables the global community to distribute resources, such as funding, and improve global conservation efforts. However, Wilson and his scientific team argues that, with few exceptions, establishing biodiversity hotspots on a global scale neglects economic costs and provides a static assessment of conservation priorities; hence, this cannot provide information on how funding should be distributed between regions, nor can it inform decision makers of when the funding should be spent. Wilson and his team in 2006 coined it as the ‘conservation resource allocation problem’.

J. R. Miller, a scientific author, states that even though strategies to reverse the erosion of biodiversity are increasing, meaningful methods are still lacking. Effective conservation is based on information from well designed studies. Wilson and his team in 2007 developed a framework that offers an improvement over approaches that only focus on land acquisition or species richness and do not account for threats. They discovered that one could protect many more plant and vertebrate species by addressing specific threats, such as invasive species control, than by relying solely on the acquisition of land for protected areas.

Refining and developing strategy models will improve conservation efforts. Refinements and improvements of models are expected to be released in the coming years. Knowledge and understanding are the key to effective conservation. However, the impracticability of gaining ultimate knowledge and understanding of natural functionality processes restricts humanity from developing absolute meaningful strategies to reverse the overall erosion of biodiversity.