Researchers Investigate the Connection Between the Diminishment of Biodiversity and the Weakening of Global Economic Development

Yellow banded dart frog. Amphibians are facing some of the worst threats to their biodiversity. A report in the journal Science highlights how biodiversity loss is weakening efforts to tackle global poverty.

PHYSORG.COM writes: "Biodiversity loss is undermining global development, leading scientists warn. The paper brings together a broad group of scientists and policy makers, including Natural History Museum plant expert Dr Sandra Knapp."

Global economic development is being threatened by the sustained loss of biodiversity according to a group of respected scientists: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jonathan E. M. Baillie, William J. Sutherland, Paul R. Armsworth, Neville Ash, John Beddington, Tim M. Blackburn, Ben Collen, Barry Gardiner, Kevin J. Gaston, H. Charles J. Godfray, Rhys E. Green, Paul H. Harvey, Brett House, Sandra Knapp, Noëlle F. Kümpel, David W. Macdonald, Georgina M. Mace, James Mallet, Adam Matthews, Robert M. May, Owen Petchey, Andy Purvis, Dilys Roe, Kamran Safi, Kerry Turner Matt Walpole, Robert Watson, Kate E. Jones who published an article, "Biodiversity Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals," to publish their findings in the September 18, 2009 issue of Science.

The summary that appears in Science condenses the main thrust of the collaborative article: "The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are designed to inspire efforts to improve people's lives by, among other priorities, halving extreme poverty by 2015 (1). Analogously, concern about global decline in biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services (2) gave rise in 1992 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD target "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss" was incorporated into the MDGs in 2002. Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target (3, 4) could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term. With increasing global challenges, such as population growth, climate change, and overconsumption of ecosystem services, we need further integration of the poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation agendas."

The main thrust of the article argues that "Biodiversity loss is undermining global development."

The authors of the article explain that: "Goals set to alleviate extreme poverty will not be met unless we address the accelerating rate of biodiversity loss,.., and new achievable targets are needed urgently."

The authors of the study contend that: "Poverty and environmental degradation have many of the same fundamental causes, such as the pressures of unsustainable human population growth."

The group of authors are in accord that: "More research is needed into the links between biodiversity and poverty, the team says, so that better decisions can be made about how the environment is used in future. The outcomes should benefit both poverty alleviation and conservation."

‘Degradation of the natural diversity of our planet will inevitably bring problems for our own species,’ says Dr Sandra Knapp.

Dr Knapp explains, ‘The integration of conservation and development goals will be difficult, and will require new interactions between scientific communities and with the public at large’.

‘We hope the newly opened Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum can be a focal point for discussion of issues that confront all of us as we integrate the Millennium Development Goals with our concern for the natural world,’ Dr Knapp concluded.

PHYSORG.COM explains that: "The 8 Millennium Development Goals were agreed by all the world’s countries and one of the goals is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by 150 governments at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, is dedicated to promoting sustainable development. However, the goals of both of these will not be met unless humans begin living in a more sustainable way."

Dr Kate Jones, Senior Research Fellow at ZSL concludes: ‘The global issues are now so intense we will only succeed if we have an integrated environment and development agenda - our children’s environment is an essential part of their welfare.’

Provided by American Museum of Natural History (news : web)

Global development and biodiversity

Biodiversity: From So Little So Many

For those of us who are fascinated with the biodiversity of life on Earth, we constantly marvel at the overwhelming diversity of life that has come from such a small portion of the Earth. Below us only some five hundred meters from the planets surface bacteria thrive. The varieties of life increase as the Earth's surface approaches. On the surface is where most of the life exists in a plethora of shapes and sizes that include microorganisms, plants, and animals. And among this great diversity of life there is a constant struggle for existence. The Earth's atmosphere acts like a partially shaded window that lets in only about a tenth of the sun's energy that strikes the Earth. Divide that by a factor of ten and that is the removed from the food web by herbivores; ten percent of that is consumed by spiders and other similar carnivores; some species of birds consume the next ten percent in the form of the spiders, etc., as the process continues until the top carnivores such as lions, tigers, sharks, eagles, etc. exist at the top of the chain only to be consumed themselves by parasites and other scavengers.

On closer observation it becomes apparent that all species are part of two hierarchies. An energy hierarchy, or pyramid consists of plants at the bottom that receive the greatest share of the sun's energy with the largest carnivores located at the very tip of the pyramid.

Biomass makes up the second hierarchy as the plants are once again located at the bottom. The next level consists of scavengers and other decomposers, including bacteria and fungi. Again, the top tip of the pyramid is populated by the largest carnivores. There is a completely different situation when the hierarchy of the oceans biomass is studied. The bottom, or largest portion of that pyramid is occupied by organisms that eat the photosynthetic life. The reason for this is that the photosynthetic organisms are not similar to the plants found on land because they are microscopic single-celled phytoplankton which despite their small size are able to fix more energy from the sun and they have a rapid life cycle. Zooplankton subsist on the phytoplankton but are unable to completely eradicate the phytoplankton. From the zooplankton, the pyramid grows smaller until the very tip is reached and is occupied by the ocean's largest carnivores.

One of the first points of interest drawn from studying the hierarchies is that the largest carnivores are completely dependent on biological diversity.

And the theoretical and experimental assumption taken away from studying diversity is that complex systems can be broken down into increasingly simpler systems. This means that the concept of understanding species and their interdependence is key to the study of biodiversity. And from this realization it can be inferred that a species is a population that consists of members that can interbreed freely under normal conditions. The caveat, under normal conditions is added to exclude consideration of hybrids created under unnatural conditions. This also means that each species is a closed gene pool and is a part of the reality that few if many hybrids occur naturally.

The biological species method of classification is not unambiguous and problem free. The inclusion of the concept of evolution creates exceptions and ambiguities that enter into the biological species method of classification. It is evolution that makes the same reproductively isolated species different from another group of the same species in another location (biogeography-the study of the distribution of biodiversity over space and time)

thus making geography a factor. Another difficulty arises when semispecies are considered because they include aspects of partial interbreeding that create hybrids under natural conditions and is a problem seen mostly among plants. A third difficulty for the biological species method of classification involves hermaphrodites where the idea of a closed gene pool holds no meaning. Continuing with the closed gene pool idea is the existence of chronospecies which simply relates to the different stages of evolution of the same species over the passage of time.

The great range of biological diversity found throughout the globe is a product of the divergence of species that express actualization of the biological species concept.