How SAVING BIODIVERSITY CAN STOP CLIMATE CHANGE (biodiversity series pt 3)

Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is important for many reasons and they can be generally divided into two categories: the importance for ecosystems and for us.

Biodiversity is what allows ecosystems to work and flourish. Over millions of years many different species of plants and animals have come to live in the same habitats. Over time they balance each other and hold the ecosystem together. When a species is removed (biodiversity is reduced) the ecosystem can lose its balance, causing it to break down.

One iconic example of this is sea otters in kelp forests along the California coast. Sea otters feed on sea urchins and sea urchins feed on kelp. If sea otters are removed sea urchins multiply, eating large portions of the kelp forest, destroying the habitat and eventually leading to the death of other animals that live there. The whole ecosystem falls apart.

Having a large biodiversity protects against a situation like this and makes ecosystems more resilient to change. In short, biodiversity maintains the balance of an ecosystem to keep them functioning and self-regulating.

For us biodiversity provides billions of dollars’ worth of resources, which we call ecosystem services. These services are separated into three types:

provisioning services
regulating services
cultural services
Provisioning services encompass anything relating to the production of renewable resources, like farming or energy production. In farming having a larger biodiversity of crops reduces the risk that they all die from the same weather event or disease. This increases the overall yield and protects the farmer.

Regulating services refers to anything that lessens environmental change. Maintaining biodiversity of tree species in a forest increases the amount of trees that grow there. Having more trees means they absorb more CO2, helping contain climate change.

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