What is biodiversity?
BIODIVERSITY
is all the various species of plants and animals, fungi and micro- organisms, as well as the many combinations of environments (landscapes) and the huge number of variants between the genes of similar organisms. In other words, biodiversity is the multiplicity of forms and manifestations of life on Earth.
Scientists distinguish three main types of biodiversity:
- genetic (between organisms of the same species);
- species (between all of the living beings on the planet);
- landscape or ecosystem (between all the combinations of environments where organisms live).
What is genetic diversity? Take an example: all the geese in a flock of wild geese may seem the same. In fact, they are all slightly different from one another. Remember how, in the remarkable story about Nils’ journey with the geese, each bird behaved differently. Of course, that is just a story, but it is basically true. One goose is quicker than the others to notice a fox creeping up on the sleeping flock across the ice; another remembers where to find a glade with lush grass beside a lake; and a third is better than the others at finding its way by the stars. So, the whole flock benefits from the special skills of the individuals in it. And this doesn’t apply only to wild geese. Every kind of animal or plant needs to solve different problems to survive, and they do it better if they each have different special abilities than if they are all the same, like robots built on the same conveyor belt.
Genetic diversity brings new species into existence. Biologists believe that differences in be- haviour and appearance – between two bears, for example – can increase over generations. And after many years the great-great-great-grandchildren of these bears settle in different regions, begin to hunt for food in different ways and prepare for hibernation differently (or even give up hibernation). That is how two different species came into existence – in this case, the Brown Bear and the Asian Black Bear.
The difference between animals of different species and larger taxonomic groups, such as phylum or class, is clear: you don’t have to be a scientist to tell a dandelion from a plantain, a dragonfly from an ant, or a crow from a fox. But why are these and millions of other species of living beings so different?
Each species of organism on the planet has its own special role. In the African savanna, the top part of the grass is eaten by zebras, the parts further down by antelopes and wildebeest, while gazelles gnaw grass near the ground, and warthogs dig out the roots and tubers. So, plant food is completely used, and the different animals are not in competition. This means that most animals living in a particular region are well-fed and healthy, and the whole ecosystem will remain stable for a long time – all thanks to species diversity.
Ecosystem diversity is easy for any attentive traveller to see if one can distinguish an alder forest from a birch wood or a coral reef from mangroves. The countless variety of ecosystems in nature is like colourful scenery, against which the endless cycle of life unfolds – except that the scenery itself plays a very important part in the cycle. Species diversity creates living conditions for huge numbers of organisms, providing them with sources of food and water, shelter, and migration routes. For example, some plants living in moist ravines can survive a severe forest fire. If excessive numbers of a certain type of insect threaten potato crops, they will be stopped by a zone where the soil freezes to a considerable depth in winter. The greater the diversity of natural conditions, the higher the chances that various species will survive, and that the ecosystem will be preserved.
Species are unevenly distributed across the surface of our planet. The diversity of species in nature is at its greatest around the equator and decreases towards the poles. The richest species diversity is found in the ecosystem of tropical rain forests, which cover about 7% of the planet’s surface but contain more than 90% of all species that are currently known.
Why is biodiversity so important?
Remember that until very recently (in historical terms) everything that people ate, and used to build their homes, as medicine, to make clothes, and for transport, was taken from nature. Yes, but not anymore, you might say. But you would be wrong. For example, modern scientists still spend much time searching in rainforests for natural raw ingredients for new medicines. Wild plant species are needed to create new crop varieties. And engineers have ‘borrowed’ many of their most original technical inventions from the kingdom of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms.
But that is not the most important role of biodiversity. What is most important is that biodiversity creates a habitat for all living beings, including human beings. What exactly does that mean? For many millions of years everything that grows, runs, swims, crawls, and flies on our planet, has adapted to the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Changes to this ‘cocktail’ of gas might only be very slight. But even a slight reduction of the oxygen content in the air we breathe would make us and many other animals feel unwell. If oxygen levels fell even further, we would feel much worse. And what maintains the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere? Green plants!
All plants and animals, micro-organisms and fungi form a highly intricate and finely adjusted system. Imagine that you and your friends spent two whole years on a spaceship flying to Mars and back. Think of all the different parts, devices, and other equipment that the spaceship would contain. Can you think of our planet being like that spaceship? Each of its ‘parts’ was created by millions of years of evolution, with the action of each part tuned to work in harmony with thousands of others. What would happen if an error by one of the crew or a meteorite damaged several devices on the spaceship? You could replace them with other similar devices, at least for a while. But what if you then suffered some other space accident?
Biological diversity in our planet is quite similar. Every organism has an important job. One processes energy from the sun, another uses that processed energy to chase prey or escape from predators, a third breaks down dead wood or the remnants of dead animals, and so on. Every one of them, from the vast baobab tree to the smallest lichen, from the mightiest whale to the lightest jellyfish, are all-important components of life on planet Earth. And there are organisms that we have yet to discover.
There may not be many of them, but they are also necessary. You might say: “There have been times in the history of life on the planet when whole groups of organisms became extinct. So, the loss of one species is no disaster, or even of a dozen or a hundred…” But stop! You are wrong! We don’t know how many losses our ‘spaceship’ can tolerate. Perhaps we have already overstepped the mark. In the short history of mankind, nature has irretrievably lost not a hundred or a thousand species, but many more.
Another important point is that biological diversity can be viewed as a measuring device that shows the sustainability and state of health of the natural world. If there are plenty of different species of living organisms, all playing their proper role, then the tropical rainforest, ocean reef or forest wetlands can continue to exist far into the future.
Ever since the beginning of history, one of the harshest punishments has been to lock a person for a long period of time in a small cell with grey walls where they cannot see the sky or communicate with fellow human beings.
If the world contains fewer plants with beautiful and fragrant flowers (or even inconspicuous and odourless flowers), fewer weasels and twirling swifts (or clumsy armadillos and slow-moving tortoises), then our shared planetary home will become more and more like a dull, grey prison cell.
What are the threats to biodiversity?
Human activity poses the biggest threat to the undisturbed existence of wild nature in all its biodiversity. We cut down forests, plough up the steppe, burn savannas, drain swamps, hunt for game, catch fish, and pollute our rivers. Of course, we do not intend to destroy the natural world. We want to feed our growing population, obtain wood to make things, produce energy, breed livestock, make room for our cities, roads, military sites, and landfills, and much more. Biodiversity is highly vulnerable to changes in natural conditions – from changes in temperature, forest fires, and melting of permafrost to drying out of wetlands and fluctuations in the level of the ocean. You already know why these changes are happening.
One unusually hot summer is not a disaster. Over thousands of years of evolution, plant and animal life has adapted to short-term fluctuations in the climate and gradual changes in nature. But what does pose a threat to biodiversity is rapid and irreversible changes in the environment, particularly changes in the climate. Let’s try to figure out why.
Mass extinctions and climate change
Throughout the entire period of life on earth that is known to science (three billion years, no less), there were several dozen periods of abrupt climate change that led to a marked reduction in biodiversity. Five of these stand out and are commonly referred to as the ‘great extinctions.’ One of the most dramatic occurred about 250 million years ago. At that time the Earth was not yet populated by the plants and animals familiar to us now, but the diversity of life was already substantial. And then, quite suddenly in geological terms, in the space of a few million years, nearly all species of animals and plants disappeared (there were far fewer plant than animal species at the time, since life in the oceans and seas, consisting mainly of animals, was much richer than on land).
The disappearance of certain species and the appearance of new ones is a constant process in the geological history of the Earth’s biosphere: no species can exist forever. Extinction has been compensated by the emergence of new species, and the total number of species has grown. The extinction of species is a natural evolutionary process that occurs without human intervention.
What mysterious causes led to the almost complete extinction of some species and the emergence of others? Scientists have strong reasons to suppose that the main causes were major changes on the planet surface, namely the drift of continents over the Earth’s crust (we learned about this in previous sections). Continental drift transformed the layout of the natural world as it then existed, including the position of mountain ranges and the system of ocean currents, and, of course, radically changed the Earth’s climate. After ancient eras when the world was cooling down, there came a time of climate warming. The climate became drier and seasonal fluctuations in temperature increased. The levels of oxygen in the surface atmosphere also changed. All this led, as we have seen, to the large-scale replacement of certain species by new species of living beings.
The extinction of species was repeated, but never again on the scale of this first event. About 60 million years ago there was another abrupt alteration of conditions on the planet, which led to the extinction of the last dinosaurs. This was also accompanied by climate change, which sped up the process of replacement of some animals and plants by other new species. Other groups of living beings, such as ammonites (sea molluscs similar in shape to rams’ horns) and belemnites (whose fossils resemble arrowheads), followed the dinosaurs out of existence. Almost half of all sea creatures disappeared at that time, and how many disappeared on land is not precisely known, because the remains of land organisms are much less well preserved.
Ammonites
Belemnites
The cooling of the climate was accompanied by the formation of ice caps at the earth’s poles. The huge tracts of ice that now exist in Greenland and Antarctica can be seen in photographs of Earth from space. How much water is needed to form such ice caps? A great deal. And where does it come from? Only from the ocean. When ice caps form, sea levels drop and living conditions for all organisms that live along coasts, in water and on land, change drastically.
So, among its other effects, climate change affects biodiversity and, in the initial stages, makes it worse. Afterwards life on the earth gradually recovers, but it never reappears in its previous form. Millions of years are required for recovery, and species that have become extinct will never return. Do we want to face extinction as a species?
Which animals react most quickly to climate change?
Of course, everything that we have discussed up to now happened in the long distant past, a past so distant that we cannot even imagine it. But how is climate change in our time impacting wildlife in all its diversity?
The impact of human activity and abrupt climate change has led to rates of species extinction across the planet that are many times greater than the rates that occur in nature.
Small animals with short life cycles are particularly dependent on environmental conditions and therefore respond faster to climate change. Of course, large organisms also react but, in their case, the effect take much longer to see. For our purposes as researchers, we want to know about events taking place today or will take place soon that we will live to see.
A modest but sustained rise of average temperatures by 1.5°–2°C in the mountains of Slovakia has led to unexpected consequences. Beautiful, warmth-loving butterflies of the swallowtail family – the Podalirius and Machaon – have spread beyond the forest-steppe zone, in which they lived, and begun to appear in cooler and damper meadowland. They have also begun to reproduce three times a year instead of twice, as before.
Other butterflies, of the Araschnia genus, previously had a different colour depending on the season: brown in spring, black in summer and brown again in autumn. But they have now assumed black colouring at all times of the year.
Also in the Slovak mountains, biologists have established two opposite tendencies in the life cycles of the spruce bark beetle and the winter moth caterpillar. The beetles have expanded their habitat area as temperatures have increased, while the voracious caterpillar now feeds less on its favourite trees. In both cases, there is a direct correlation between temperature changes and insect behaviour.
The yellow-striped pygmy eleuth is a small frog that inhabits tropical forests, where fluctuations in temperature and humidity during the day and through the year are small but do occur. Scientists became interested in the peculiarities of the relationship between the frog and a parasitic mould that grows on its body. It was found that the parasite is much less vulnerable to a change in environmental conditions than its host. So, climate change makes the parasite more dangerous to the frog, jeopardizing the entire population of the host species.
In the cold waters of the Southern Ocean, even the slightest increase in temperature leads to an increase in acidity and reduction of oxygen content. This has led to mass migration by bivalvular molluscs of the species Laternula elliptica away from the danger zone. However, older molluscs (aged more than three years) lack the muscle strength to migrate and are perishing in large numbers. You may ask: can’t these creatures settle in new regions and restore population numbers? But it is not so easy: the species is only able to reproduce after the third year of life, when it loses mobility.
Corals have also been among the first to be affected by climate change. Corals are highly sensitive organisms. Water that is too warm or too cold, lack of light and excess impurities all act to slow down or stop the growth of corals. Coral polyps cannot move about and are very poorly adapted to environmental changes. They must live and die where they are born. The micro-algae that absorb the energy of sunlight for coral polyps are very dependent on water temperature. At many places on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, scientists are seeing the death of algae and bleaching of the coral, which occurs when the reef dies. This is because repeated marine heat waves over the last several years have turned much of the Great Barrier Reef a ghostly white colour. Smoke from severe forest and peat fires in Indonesia often leads to atmospheric emissions of iron compounds, which cause the rapid flowering of algae that produce substances that are toxic for corals.
Warming in polar regions is reducing the area of seasonal sea ice, the underside of which is a breeding ground for microscopic ocean plants, called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are at the beginning of a food chain, which includes krill, fish, penguins and other seabirds, seals, and several sub- species of whales. If there is not enough ice, the phytoplankton cannot grow and breed in sufficient amounts. Krill cannot live in water that lacks sustenance, and their place is taken by translucent, jelly-like salps, which are ancient creatures. This causes an interruption of the food chain as hardly any animals eat salps, except for a few species of fish and sea turtles. So, whales cannot build up sufficient reserves of fat in the winter months, and other creatures also forsake waters that lack the food they need. Once again, we see the complex inter-relationships that exist in nature and are reflected in biodiversity.
The shrinking northern polar ice cap is the most visible sign of climate warming. Polar bears need ice for their migration and to hunt for seals, and the ice is also vitally necessary for the seals themselves, as without it they have nowhere to rear their young. If ice fields start to shrink more than is usual each summer, the seal population also shrinks and hungry polar bears eat the whole carcasses of the seals they catch, instead of devouring only the seal’s layer of fat. Previously the remains of a polar bear’s meal provided a feast for other inhabitants of the Arctic – the Arctic fox and numerous birds. But now there is nothing left over for them!
As the climate becomes warmer, the forest in the northern fringe of Eurasia is slowly but surely advancing into the tundra at a rate of tens of kilometres each century. This changes the habitat and food sources of numerous types of birds. Warm winters in the Arctic are also disastrous for both wild and domesticated reindeer, as thaws and rainfall in the winter cover the snow with a crust of ice, making it harder for the reindeer to find lichens, which are their staple diet during the winter months.
The lemming, the most numerous inhabitants of the tundra, is also suffering from the warmer climate. The holes they live in are now flooded with water too early in the year, reducing the lemming population and forcing birds of prey and foxes to go hungry.
In the Southern Hemisphere, on the Antarctic coast, which has the appearance of an ice desert with rocky outcrops and very sparse vegetation, researchers are suddenly finding abundant thickets of Antarctic hair grass, a small plant that previously grew only in small clumps between stones, sheltering from the icy winds of the southern continent.
In the Daurian steppe of eastern Russia, between Lake Baikal and the Greater Khingan Mountains of Mongolia, scientists have noted that the climate is growing more arid because of global warming. Lakes and small rivers are disappearing, forest belts are drying out and the vegetation on the steppe is burnt by the sun earlier in the year. The animal inhabitants of the steppe are doing what they can to adapt to the change. Larvae and fish spawn bury themselves deep in silt at the bottom of water courses. Birds migrate to other places, changing their flight paths and nesting sites. There is insufficient food for all the local water birds, such as the cormorant, grey heron, and herring gull. The swan goose no longer nests in the region. Wolves, foxes, badgers and even cranes are moving away in search of more water. Birds of prey, which need plenty of water to digest their diet of meat, are also migrating to more suitable regions. The Tolai hare finds itself short of grass in the summertime, not only to feed on but also to hide from predators. The Tabargan marmot and Daurian ground squirrel, both indigenous to the area, are well-adapted to drought, but are finding life in the new conditions difficult, as they cannot move quickly enough to escape grass fires, an increasingly frequent occurrence in the summertime. Burnt grass also means a lack of winter forage for hoofed beasts, forcing large herds of antelope and gazelle to migrate from Mongolia to Russia.
The few remaining watering places in the Daurian steppe are now overcrowded with animals in search of water, which increases the risk of disease. As summers become drier, winters have experienced more snowfall, because of which the manul (a species of wild cat) cannot find food. The Daurian hedgehog is almost alone in benefiting from the change of climate: it needs more than five months of warmth for a successful life cycle, so it is expanding its presence in the new conditions.
National parks: learning to preserve nature
What is a national park? It is a protected area that can be visited by tourists, where human activity is limited by definite rules. National parks are usually created in places where there are many different landscapes (both typical and unique), rare or endangered animals and plants, and unique geological or water phenomena. Adults and children visit them to learn about global environmental issues. National parks can be used to create nurseries to breed rare species of plants and animals.
Does climate change affect national parks? Unfortunately, global climate change leads to fires, droughts, increases in temperature and many other phenomena that cannot be kept at bay simply by declaring an area to be a national park.
In the Everglades Park in Florida (USA), the conditions for freshwater flora and fauna vary depending on the influx of salty seawater from the nearby Florida Bay, a process being influenced by climate change. Scientists and staff of protected areas understand that such processes threaten the very existence of national parks, and the US Environmental Protection Agency together with the National Park Service have set up Climate Friendly Parks. The programme acquaints park staff and visitors with the causes and consequences of climate change and explains what they can do to help solve global problems associated with climate change.
Yugyd Va National Park (Russia)
Wildlife reserves: nature without humanity
Wildlife (biosphere) reserves are places where scientists can monitor and record changes in the natural world. In a wildlife reserve it is forbidden even to pick berries or mushrooms or catch fish. Such places are ideal for restoring populations of endangered species, which can then be released into suitable areas outside the reserve.
Biosphere reserves are often created in places where nature is not subject to any substantial human influence. They are used to safeguard typical local ecosystems as well as rare species and communities of animals and plants. For example, the ecosystem to be protected in taiga regions would be that of the taiga, while in a tropical region it would be the tropical rainforest. The conservation of the natural environment in such areas has global importance.
Biosphere reserves exist on all the world’s continents. You have probably seen films about such areas in Africa. It is thanks to such biosphere reserves that the diverse natural world of the African continent is being kept alive for us today.
(USA)
All biosphere reserves participate in the Man and the Biosphere Programme, run by UNESCO, which supports long-term studies of the environment. Studies are now being carried out in many reserves of the impact of climate change on plant and animal life. Scientists working at the Caucasian State Biosphere Reserve in southern Russia have found that the forest cover on the slopes of mountains is gradually moving higher as the climate becomes warmer.
The Zion National Park in Utah in the USA is a fine example of how to achieve environmental safety. About 20 buses, using low-emission gas fuel, carry visitors around the park, replacing about 5,000 cars that visitors would otherwise bring with them. The result has been a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. A ‘Green Centre’ built at the park to welcome tourists obtains nearly a third of its energy needs from the sun, with 80% of its lighting needs provided by natural light. In the summer the air conditioning system uses special energy-efficient evaporators. In the winter a passive heating system, which uses a wall of heat-absorbing materials (stone, brick) facing the sun, maximizes heat retention.
The Taganay National Park in Russia has installed the first eco-friendly energy supply system to be used at a protected natural area in the country. One of the shelters in the park now obtains its electricity from wind energy (wind turbines) and the sun (solar panels). The system automatically determines which of the two sources of energy, solar or wind, should be used at any moment. Previously this and other shelters and facilities at the park were dependent on gasoline- powered generators, an energy source that is both expensive and harmful for the environment. A new lighting system, powered by solar and wind energy, has been installed in Adler at the Yuzhniye Kultury section of the Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve in southern Russia.
Wildlife sanctuaries and areas of outstanding natural importance
The point of wildlife sanctuaries is to protect not the whole of the local natural environment, but only individual parts of it: for example, only plants or only animals, or perhaps some geo- logical features (rocks or caves). So, their restrictions on human activity only refer to activity that threatens the protected parts of the environment.
Areas of outstanding natural importance are unique or typical natural areas and landmarks, which have special scientific, cultural, educational, or health-related value. They may be lakes, trees, geological sites, or ancient parks. They are protected by prohibitions on certain kinds of human activity that could damage their integrity.
How do protected areas help to address the problems of climate change
What is the contribution of a national park (and any other protected area) in addressing climate change? The most significant contribution is the reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For example, some parks encourage tourists to use public buses powered by alternative fuel instead of polluting private cars. Park employees themselves also use forms of transport that have minimal impact on the environment. Parks may use energy from the wind, sun, or hot springs in the premises where they receive visitors. Maximum use is made of natural lighting and LEDs, and solar panels provide power for offices. Tourists are offered souvenirs made from recycled materials, the park cafeteria serves dishes made from local products (avoiding ‘food miles’ and the accompanying transport pollution), made in an environmentally safe manner, and park premises are equipped with water-saving toilets. Visitors receive information on how to behave in a way that is most environmentally efficient and least environmentally damaging.
Ecotourism: harmony between man and nature
Do you enjoy walking and other outdoor activities? If yes, then you and your friends will enjoy travelling and discovering new places. Maybe you will even become ecotourists.
What is the difference between tourists and ecotourists? What sets them apart is their attitude towards the environment. Ecotourism is a recent concept that arose when people began to understand how important the natural world is to us. There are different ways of relaxing outdoors.
You can drive into the forest or to the edge of a lake by car, switch on music at full volume, light a fire in the nicest place you can find, have a picnic, and leave a pile of garbage behind you. But there are other tourists who are willing to climb to the top of a mountain just to see a wild animal, find a rare plant, listen to the birds singing, or enjoy the sunset and the silence. Their goal is to see and hear the natural world, which modern people so rarely witness. They don’t leave garbage – on the contrary, they often clear up other people’s garbage, and make sure to obey all the rules in place to protect the environment. Happily, the numbers of ecotourists are growing year by year!
Ecotourism gives people the opportunity to see the environment in its untouched, natural state, understand how diverse it is, how vulnerable to human activity, and to ponder the question: ‘What can I do for my planet?’ Ecotourists study the laws of nature and do things that help to maintain and preserve it, they try to reduce their environmental impact to a minimum. What is more, ecotourism firms give a part of their revenue to support the protection and study of the environment.
Many outstanding natural environments are in remote places, in rural areas where people are relatively poor. They are also in areas such as the jungles of South America or mountain regions along the border between northern Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos, which are inhabited by indigenous peoples. Therefore, ecotourists often learn not only about the natural world, but also about human culture. And ecotourism provides work and an additional source of income for people who live in these regions.
So, ecotourism helps people to see the beauty and uniqueness of nature, understand how everything in the world around them is connected, learn how many species of animals and plants live on our planet, and realize the extent to which the state of the environment depends on the actions of each person, teenagers, and children as well as adults.
An eco-hotel in Costa Rica
What are the global Red List and Red Data Book and what are they for?
The Red List is a list of rare and endangered species of animals, plants, and fungi. The colour red reminds us of the risk to these species and the urgent need to protect and preserve them.
Lists of living organisms all over the planet, which need protection, are included in the International Red Book, the main copy of which is kept in the Swiss town of Morges. The book is published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and first appeared in 1963. This unusual book is designed like a desk calendar and is constantly changing: as time passes, the situation of species already in the book changes and the names of new species of plants, animals and fungi are added.
For each species it features, the Red Book provides information on the distribution, population numbers, habitat features, other details and measures required for its conservation. Its pages are in different colours. Pages describing extinct species are marked in black. These include, for example, the sea cow, the passenger pigeon, and the dodo. Pages marked in red deal with endangered and very rare species (the far-eastern leopard, the Amur tiger, the snow leopard and the European bison). Animals whose numbers are rapidly decreasing are listed on pages marked yellow (the polar bear, pink seagull, goitered gazelle). Animals and plants rarely found in the wild are recorded on white pages. Species that have not been sufficiently studied because they live in remote places are recorded in grey. The most encouraging are the green pages, which record species that people have succeeded in saving from extinction (e.g., the Eurasian beaver and the Eurasian elk).
Each country and region in the world also create their own lists of rare and protected species.
Before a particular species is included in the Red Book, scientists carry out intensive studies of the flora, fauna, and fungi in relevant areas, find out the causes which threaten the species, describe their habitats, and decide how they should be preserved. The Red Book not only contains rare and endemic species (species found only in a specific territory), but a whole range of flowering, edible and medicinal plants.
Animals and plants may need to be protected for two groups of reasons: direct and indirect. There are direct reasons for protection when people destroy animals and plants through hunting, gathering medicinal plants, fishing, or collecting aquatic organisms. Indirect reasons relate to change of habitat, including that which is caused by global climate change. Such indirect reasons may include difficult acclimatization to climate change, the introduction of new species of plants (when ‘newcomers’ displace native species, for any of various reasons) and the destruction of plants that are a source of food for animals.
What are the adaptation solutions based on ecosystems?
Available adaptation solutions can build resilience to climate risks and, in many cases, simultaneously deliver broader sustainable development benefits.
One of these solutions is ecosystem-based adaptation that can help communities adapt to impacts already devastating their lives and livelihoods, while also safeguarding biodiversity, improving health outcomes, bolstering food security, delivering economic benefits, and enhancing carbon sequestration. Many ecosystem-based adaptation measures — including the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems, as well as more sustainable agricultural practices like integrating trees into farmlands and increasing crop diversity — can be implemented at relatively low costs today. The key to their success is to engage local communities and ensure that strategies are designed to account for how a rise in global temperature will impact ecosystems.
Figure 2.2.1 Ecosystem-based adaptation that can protect lives and livelihoods
QUESTIONS
1
Which of the Earth’s ecosystems is the richest in terms of species diversity?
2
What is meant by ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ causes of the extinction of living organisms? Give examples.
3
How would you and your friends begin a story in class about the importance of biodiversity? What arguments are the most persuasive for schoolchildren and which for adults?
4
Why are the Red Book and the Red List red? What plants, animals and fungi do you know that have been listed in the Red Book? Why are they disappearing? Can we help to preserve them?
What different colours are used on the pages of the Red Book? Why does the Red Book become longer each time it is updated?
5
How does global warming affect reindeer?
6
Who can fairly be called an ‘ecotourist’?
7
What kind of adaptation measures, mentioned in this chapter and others, can you recommend that address climate impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems?
8
What solutions form part of ecosystems-based adaptation?
TASKS
Working together with the rest of your class, create your own Red List.
Draw an animal, plant, or fungus in need of protection on a page of a certain colour and explain your choice.
