Biodiversity Essay Competition - I

We participated in an essay competition. The topics were preserving biodiversity or saving energy. I chose to write about biodiversity. This is one of the essays submitted into the essay competition:

Suppose a massive climate change crisis descended upon the world and all our livestock died? How will we obtain protein-rich food? Our only hope is other species that can survive harsh circumstances. Unfortunately, we are killing off these unusual species in order to increase the population of our normal livestock. Therefore, if our current livestock resources would be depleted, we would have no other back-up food source for extinction is an irreversible process. Scientists believe that humans have triggered a mass-extinction of a scale never seen since the last major mass-extinction, 65 million years ago, at the end of the dinosaurs’ epoch. Biologists have estimated that about 30,000 species see their last member die annually. By the end of the century, nearly 500,000 species would have become extinct. It is believed that, in the last 100 years, humans have increased the extinction rate by over 1,000 times.

Biodiversity has been a serious issue for a few decades. Although, many governments and organizations have tried to tackle the problem with several methods, there has been no sign of improvement. All efforts to stop the mass-extinction have been futile. The main reason why there has been no progress is because we have pitted biodiversity preservation and human welfare against each other. For years, preservationists have believed in the hotspots theory, in which twenty-five locations in the world with the most diverse plant life are protected at any costs. Usually, these hotspots are in rainforests. People have lost their homes and wealth while moving out of these national parks. However, plants make up less than one percent of the Earth’s life tree. Hence, it is unreasonable to justify that the more the plant life in a location means the more biodiversity. Recently, numerous conservationists have opposed this theory and have developed ecosystem services strategy. Why place biodiversity and human welfare on opposite sides of the see-saw? This new strategy informs the public about our dependence on the resources of ecosystems and aims to protect biodiversity for the sake of humans. Therefore, we must preserve biodiversity because it is essential to humankind’s survival.

Currently, we owe our terrestrial ecosystems a great debt. Without any of them, humans would become extinct. The raw materials, food, and other resources we obtain from the life around us helps all of us survive. It is safe to state that everything we make or use involves nature’s resources in some way. However, we are using these resources at an uncontrollable pace. In 2000, the United Nations launched the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Conducted by an international team of more than 1,300 scientists, four aspects of ecosystem services were assessed: provisioning (resources from nature), regulating (nature’s control over catastrophes), cultural (benefits for social relationships), and supporting (basic elements of ecosystems). It was reported that nearly all of these services have not only declined, but have been used unsustainably. Simply put, we humans are fueling our own destruction. The damage of Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was amplified by the lack of vegetation on coastlines. In both cases, humans depleted vegetation along coasts, leading to more damage than with vegetation. Moreover, farmers in the Sahara desert are affecting economies half the world away. Every year, several hundred million tons of sand is blown away to the Caribbean Sea, in which coral reefs and local industries are harmed. Natural resources are the backbones of developing economies. Improving the environmental situation is to alleviate poverty for 750 million people. Third, when ecosystems collapse, human health is threatened. Nearly two million people die of water contamination. Wetlands and forests can provide abundant resources of clean drinking water.

Biodiversity is not only helpful to humans now, but it can be crucial in the future. According to scientists all over the globe, there is a 70% chance of a global disaster to occur in the next century. This catastrophe can be a sudden climate change, an outbreak of a universal pandemic, or fluctuations in sea level. Regardless of the case, there is an extremely high chance of our main sources of food to become extinct during the event. Only thirty types of crops provide more than 90% of the world’s calories and 14 animal species that make up nearly 90% of our livestock. Moreover, all of these crucial species are prone to diseases and are sensitive to climate changes. If some of these keystone species die off, the entire world can become dead by a global mass-extinction. Fortunately, there is a solution to this dilemma. There are some relatives of our central plant and livestock species, which can withstand dire conditions, such as diseases and harsh climates. Some examples are the Blanco Orejinegro cattle of the Andes, Namaqua Africander sheep of Africa, and the Yakut cattle of Siberia.

In conclusion, biodiversity must be maintained not only for the sake of other organisms, but also for the sake of humans. Humans heavily depend on the lives of other species right now and will do so in the future. Many ecologists and biologists are starting to think that the Earth still has a chance of reviving itself. Although the extinction rate is rising, it has not yet reached the threshold, which divides sustainable rates and catastrophic rates. Already, many plans are being executed in both developing nations, such as China and India, and developed countries, such as USA and Japan. Many illustrious icons have said encouraging words to the public about the relationship between biodiversity and human comfort. Former U.N. secretary-general Kofi A. Annan said “our fight against poverty, inequality and disease is directly linked to the health of the Earth.” In short, to maintain biodiversity is to protect all organisms on Earth, including us.  By Y.J. Kim