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What is Biodiversity?
A simpler explanation of biodiversity is that
it represents collective diversity of all life on
Earth including animals, plants, fungi, and
micro organisms like bacteria.
Nevitha R.S.
In the past the value of biodiversity and the ecosystem was sidelined in national decision-making, which resulted in a widespread loss of biodiversity and a significant decline in ecosystem services. An estimate shows more than half of the world’s GDP, approximately $44 trillion of value added goods, is dependent on industries that are highly or moderately reliant on nature and its services.
It is also estimated that transitioning to nature-friendly production practices could generate about $10 trillion in business opportunities and about 395 million jobs by 2030. Most importantly, a biologically diverse ecosystem can reduce upto 37% of carbon emissions, which will be an important contribution towards the objectives of the Paris
Agreement.
Hence, our natural environment is fundamental to our economics, health, and climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. However, human economic activity is causing biodiversity loss at an unprecedented level.
Dr Veena Sagar
Ashok Manjanath
…How are Climate change and Biodiversity intertwined? …
…However, change in temperature and carbon dioxide alter rates of photosynthesis and carbon content within primary producers. Most carbon and nutrients aretransferred to soil through litterfall, root exudation and decaying organism.
Plants and animals on land & in the ocean create habitat structure, local environment, and source of food in ecosystem hierarchy. Plants also return half of the carbon to the atmosphere through respiration in the form of carbon dioxide.
Eventually plants, algae, micro-plankton degrade after death and some are buried for millennia to form coal, oil, and gas. In this process, carbon is trapped in these fossil fuels. These fossil fuels have
become the primary source of energy for human activities since the industrial revolution…
Conti…
Ashok Manjanath
Sateja Rajwade
Human economic activities release these trapped carbon dioxides again in the atmosphere through the combustion process and alter atmospheric chemistry. We also transform land and ocean surface, causes deforestation and results in widespread loss of biodiversity and climate change.
Human activities such as change of land use or sea use, agricultural practice, and fossil fuel combustion are the direct drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change. A recent study based on cross-national sample of 115 countries showed that the occurrences of natural disaster events, rise in temperature, and change in precipitation, play important role in affecting biodiversity loss.
However, the impact on biodiversity loss is more affected by the changes in precipitation and temperature rise than the changes in the frequency of the natural disaster events.
Devi Prasad Rao
Devi Prasad Rao
Devi Prasad Rao
a) to change land use – from agriculture, unsustainable forest management, urbanization, industrial developments, and transport networks.
b) to stop over-exploitation and unsustainable use of nature.
c) to stop pollution from nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) and other pollutants
from industrial, mining, and agricultural activities as well as air pollution, greenhouse
gas emissions, untreated urban and rural waste, and plastic pollution.
d) to mitigate climate change
e) to stop spread of invasive species
Dr Steven Andrews
What is Blue Carbon?
Blue Carbon is the carbon stored in the marine biosphere, such as in the leaves, branches, stems, roots of mangroves, saltwater tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows, and in the coastal organic soil.
Data suggest that coastal ecosystem can sequester carbon dioxide from atmosphere and oceans at significantly higher rate per unit area than terrestrial forest. Mangroves are tropical marine forest grows in the tidal flooded area at the edge of the land and sea.
Tidal marsh are coastal wetlands containing partially or fully submerged vegetation suited to both fresh and salt water Seagrasses are fully submerged flowering plants that can grow in meadows.
Dr Steven Andrews
Importance of Blue Carbon
The marine ecosystem is a major element of the global carbon cycle, and it contributes approximately half of the annual photosynthetic absorption of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas (GHG)) from the atmosphere.
Carbon is sequestered in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Blue carbon is
sequestered in living marine biomass for relatively short time scales (years to decades). However, unlike terrestrial ecosystems, carbon can be stored or remain
trapped in coastal soil for much longer time periods (centuries to millennia).
Dr Steven Andrews
…Importance of Blue Carbon…
What is a Wetland?
Dr Steven Andrews
Rupesh Chindarkar
Nivetha R. S.
Ashok Manjanath
More than a billion people depend on wetlands for living
Rice paddy agricultural wetlands provides staple diet for 3.5 billion people
Wetlands (especially rivers, lakes and coastal areas are hotspot for relaxation
and pleasure tourism
Safe water access enhances educational opportunities for communities living along wetland
Almost all of world’s freshwater consumption is either directly or indirectly
drawn from wetlands
Sustainable upstream water management can provide affordable and
clean energy
Wetlands supports 266 million jobs through wetland-based tourism and travel
activities
Health wetlands protects from flooding and storm surge
Urban wetland acts natural affluent treatment zone
Sustainably managed wetlands support water consumption demand
Heathy wetland can mitigate climate change as natural carbon storage
zone. For example: Peatlands cover only 3% of global land but store about
twice the amount of carbon stored by world’s entire forest biomass.
Healthy and productive oceans rely on well-functioning coastal and marine
wetlands.
40% of all the world’s species live and breed in wetlands
Sagar Shinde
NOT just HUMAN-induced CLIMATE CHANGE but
Species evolve and become extinct overtime a normal process of nature. It is estimated that 98% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. cientists have observed that, at present, the extinction of species is happening 1000 times more quickly than expected and 29% of 142,000 assessed species are now extinct.
Dr Kuntal Goswami
Mark Freed
NOT just HUMAN-induced CLIMATE CHANGE but
Ashok Manjanath
Forests in the Natural Ecosystems – the Bedrock of Life on Earth
Forest is fundamental to fight climate change, to conserve nature, to save people and to run the economy. It is estimated that 1.6 billion people depends on forests for food, water, wood, and employment.
Forests sequester carbon, regulate our climate, acts as flood barriers, recharge groundwater, filter air, protect biodiversity. In addition, forests contribute about $150 trillion to economic progress.
Deforestation is increasing global CO2 emissions by 15% and if we consider tropical deforestation a country then it would be the world’s third largest emitter. It is estimated that globally we deforest tropical forest equal to the size of New York’s Central Park in every 15 minutes.
Hence, it is impossible to halt climate change and stay well below 1.5 degree C temperature rise relative to pre industrial revolution days, until or less we can stop deforestation.
Sateja Rajwade
Alarming facts of the Global Biomass of all mammals and birds
Jayesh O Bhanushali
What are Aichi Biodiversity Targets and how much each target has progressed?
Strategic Goal A: Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society.
Strategic Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use
Strategic Goal C: Improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity.
Strategic Goal D: Enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Strategic Goal E: Enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building.
Out of 20 targets only six targets had been partially progressed and these six targets are:
Target 9: Controlling invasive alien species pathways and preventing their establishment.
Target 11: 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of coastal and marine areas are conserved.
Target 16: Use of Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of benefits arising from their utilization is present in signatories.
Target 17: Submission, development, and implementation of national biodiversity strategy plans
Target 19: Research, scientific support and technology relating to biodiversity conservation are improved and widely shared
Target 20: Signatories have mobilised the needed amount of financial resources to implement their national biodiversity strategy plans via domestic spending and international financial flows.
Sateja Rajwade
The Need for a Global Annual Biodiversity Conservation Fund
The World Economic Forum, estimates that about USD $44 trillion of economic value or over half of the world’s GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) Index has estimated that one-fifth of all countries, with both developing and advanced economies, have more than 30%
of their territory at risk of ecosystem collapse due to a decline in biodiversity.
For example: countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan are particularly at risk as they are highly dependent on their agricultural sectors and, additionally, they have highly fragile ecosystems.
A) Funding requirement for Biodiversity Conservation
Expand the global protected area network to 30% of all USD $149-192
terrestrial and marine ecosystems
Global conservation and restoration of critical coastal USD $27-37 billion
ecosystems including mangroves, seagrass, saltmarshes, and oyster reefs
B) Funding requirement for mainstream biodiversity conservation
Global sustainable management of agricultural lands USD $438-580 billion
(cropland, and rangelands), forests, and fisheries
Global invasive species management USD $36-84 billion
Biodiversity conservation in urban environments and re USD $72.6-73.2 billion
ducing water pollution
Roots – the Invisible Heroes
Katan Talati
Vinod Shlivahana
…Roots – the Invisible Heroes (conti…)
As roots form a web of network it hold the soil, absorbs sediments, and helps to protect coastal erosion and plants diminish the energy of larger waves, thereby, helps in coastal protection.
New research also suggesting that roots can be used to mine resources such rare earth minerals
Mark Parnell
Soil – reservoir of Biodiversity & stock of Carbon
Devi Prasad Rao
…Soil – reservoir of Biodiversity & stock of Carbon…
Microbes includes virus, bacteria, archaea, fungi (20 nm to 10 um) and Microfauna like soil protozoa and nematodes (10 um to 0.1 mm). They facilitate decomposition of soil organic matter, weathering of minerals.
Mesofauna (0.1 mm to 2 mm) are soil microarthropods (mites, springtails, enchytraeids, apterygote and small larvae of insects). They facilitate transformation of soil organic matter and increases the surface of active biochemical interactions in the soil.
Macrofauna (2 nm to 20 mm) are large soil invertebrates (earthworms, woodlice, ants, termites, beetles, insect larvae). They act litter transformers, increases water permeability and soil aeration.
Sourav Mahant
…Soil – reservoir of Biodiversity & stock of
Carbon…
…Soils holds largest stock of carbon on earth and in a broad sense, the carbon in soil is recycled within a microbe-driven soil food web. Microorganisms are thus central players in the transformation of plant and animal residues and are also key reservoirs
of organic carbon in soil .
Carbon is either fixed or released from soils, depending on the activity of the soil microbiomes, and driven by abiotic conditions such as water content, temperature, oxygen level and pH level.
Soil has a tremendous potential for regulating the atmospheric carbon content by sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change.
Reference
International Finance Corporation (2020), International Finance Corporation (2020)
Carbon: The Unauthorised Biography, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) (2022)
Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2020)
Global Wetland Outlook – State of the World’s Wetlands and their services to people,
Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (2018)
Global Wetland Outlook – State of the World’s Wetlands and their services to people,
Muzafar Shah Habibullah, Badariah Haji Din, Siow-Hooi Tan, and Hasan Zahid (2021)
Understanding your Blue Carbon Project, Clean Energy Regulator (2022)
Scientific Outcome of the IPBES-IPCC Workshop on Biodiversity and climate change, IPBES-IPCC (2021)
State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity, Food and Agriculture organisation of the United Nations (2020)