Biodiversity conservation saves ecosystem services
Healthy ecosystems that provide people with essential natural goods and services often overlap with regions rich in biological diversity, showing that conserving one also protects the other, according to a new study.
The report confirms the value of making biological diversity a priority for conservation efforts. It shows that more than 70 % of the world’s protected because of their diversity also contain significant value in services such as fresh water, food, carbon storage, storm buffers and other natural resources that sustain human life and support social and economic development.
Scientists found that the value of ecosystem services in the 7% of the planet of greatest biodiversity conservation priority was more than double the global average. Overall, the annual value of services from nature is estimated at $33 trillion, or greater than the gross national product of all nations combined.
This report clearly shows that in many places in the world, strategies for conserving threatened biodiversity also help protect ecosystems, thereby improving human well-being and alleviating poverty.
The report proposes strategies protecting both biological diversity and ecosystem services to increase the efficiency of dollars and efforts spent. Tropical forests are places of particularly high overlap of priorities because of their biological diversity and ecosystem services essential to the welfare of many of the world’s 1 billion people living in extreme poverty.
Significantly, there are many opportunities for conserving both species and ecosystem services together, especially in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, Madagascar, Borneo and New Guinea. Protecting these intact forests is critical to reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries while also supporting the livelihoods of traditional and indigenous peoples.
We know that climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing the planet, the study provides makes clear that investments to maintain healthy ecosystems are cost effective for biodiversity, the livelihoods of local people and economic development, and a way to protect the CO2 stored in these areas from release.
Protecting intact tropical forests is critical for reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries. We need to conserve these forests for the benefit of local populations and the world as a whole.
Restoring destroyed forests also is necessary to help damaged habitat recover, ensure the persistence of species, and restore critical ecosystem services, particularly in regions with large human populations such as Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and much of Southeast Asia.
Adapted, from: Conservation International
December 6, 2007