14 DAY TRIAL // International efforts to stop the global loss of biodiversity from most ecosystems have been slacking as of late, 17 respected ecologists argue in this week's issue of the journal Nature. They say that renewed commitment is needed to ensure that ecosystemic failure does not ensure.
The warning comes 20 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which established the Climate Change Convention agreement that led to the Kyoto Protocol. A successor to the latter has been in the works for years, but thus far, governments have been unwilling to make substantial commitments.
The Summit analyzed the use of dangerous chemicals in production processes, explored potential sources of alternative energy, discussed a return to public over private transportation, and covered worrying issues such as the global scarcity of water.
Sadly, nature is losing its ability to provide us with the goods and services that our civilization requires, and this is a scientific fact. That other interests are unwilling to acknowledge the problem is another matter entirely.
The international team that published the Nature paper was led by researcher Bradley Cardinale, from the University of Michigan (U-M). The productivity and sustainability of ecosystems, he argues, is severely damaged by biodiversity loss.
“Water purity, food production and air quality are easy to take for granted, but all are largely provided by communities of organisms,” adds US National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology program director, George Gilchrist. The DEB funded this research.
“This paper demonstrates that it is not simply the quantity of living things, but their species, genetic and trait biodiversity, that influences the delivery of many essential 'ecosystem services,” he adds.
Modern-day species extinction rates are several orders of magnitude higher than the fossil records indicate as normal. This increase in loss rates stems from our direct actions on ecosystems, which are negative for the most part.
Biodiversity preservation should be made an international priority, the group explains. This would help maintain the current varieties of life, and could ultimately lead to restoring the amount and quality of resources that have been lost.
“No one can agree on what exactly will happen when an ecosystem loses a species, but most of us agree that it's not going to be good. And we agree that if ecosystems lose most of their species, it will be a disaster,” Columbia University expert and paper coauthor, Shahid Naeem, explains.