– Dr. Sushil Dwivedi
Biodiversity means biodiversity is very important to maintain the life balance on our planet Earth. It is the cornerstone of ecosystem services. About eight billion people living around the world are constantly consuming the earth’s heritage. When we talk about biodiversity, we refer to the biological (biological) and genetic (genetic) diversity of all the organisms and bio-systems present on the earth. Biodiversity includes living organisms, plants and animals, apart from fungi and microbial bacteria found in the soil. They are part of a wide variety of ecosystems around the world, including the icy Antarctic, tropical rainforests, the Sahara desert, mangrove wetlands, the old beech forests of central Europe, and a diversity of marine and coastal habitats.
These biodiversity provide things worth living such as water, food, clean air and medicine, collectively called ecosystem services. And they also depend on the mutualism of species diversity. If any one species dies, these services provided by nature may also disappear forever. There are many contradictions on the total number of species in the world, but according to The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services-IPBES, their number is between 3 million and 100 million. 14,35,662 species have been identified in the world. Although many species are yet to be identified.
The main species identified are 7,51,000 species of insects, 2,48,000 plants, 2,81,000 animals, 68,000 fungi, 26,000 algae, 4,800 bacteria and 1,000 viruses. About 27,000 species are becoming extinct every year due to the degradation of ecosystems. Most of these are tropical small creatures. On average, one species is dying out every 10 minutes. When a species disappears from the eco system, the balance of nature slowly starts to disintegrate.
According to researchers, we are in the midst of the world’s sixth mass extinction. If the current rate of biodiversity loss continues, a quarter of the world’s species will be extinct by 2050. Due to loss of biodiversity, without algae or trees, there would be no oxygen. And without pollinators like birds, bees and other insects that pollinate plants, our crops would collapse. More than two-thirds of crops—including many fruits, vegetables, coffee, and cocoa—rely on natural pollinators such as insects. When the bowl of food is in front of us early in the morning, then we do not think that how much nature has helped in pollinating these crops, due to which that food is prepared. We do not see what nature is doing for us on a daily basis.
The reason behind an epidemic like Kovid-19 is also natural imbalance from somewhere. Ever since we started destroying biodiversity, we started destroying the system which is helpful for the health system. Today, if we see, about 100 crore people fall ill every year due to different types of this corona virus and lakhs of people die. Not only this, 75 percent of all the diseases occurring in humans on earth are zoonotic. Zoonotic means diseases that come from animals to humans. In simple words, such diseases which are born in animals and from them come inside us humans. These diseases spread all over the world which are caused by virus, bacteria, fungus, parasites. They can range from mild to very severe.
Experts believe that more than 60 percent of diseases occurring in humans reach humans from animals. Actually, the way we destroyed all kinds of creatures from the earth and took their place ourselves or gave them to the creatures we wanted. Due to this, the diversity of bio-diversity on the earth ended and the animals which could handle these viruses, bacteria or other disease-causing organisms, did not remain on the earth. In this way, as a second host, the micro-organisms got the life they needed to continue their life and they started entering us. Similarly, in the year 1997, 50 thousand people of the whole world died due to rabies.
Maximum 30 thousand died in India. After all, why did he die of rabies, a question arose. Researchers from Stanford University found in their study that this was due to a sudden decrease in the number of vultures. On the other hand there was a sudden increase in the number of rats and dogs. The study pointed out that scavenging of dead animals, dispersal of seeds and pollination were also affected to a great extent by the extinction of birds. A country like America is busy in preserving its bats. Now we think that bats are completely useless. But scientists are creating awareness. Bats eat mosquito larvae. It is a major nocturnal pollinator. People say what is the use of an owl, but farmers know that it is a friend of farming, whose main food is the mouse.
The way biodiversity is being exploited in the name of development, its far-reaching consequences will be seen only on development. The need today is to create a better synergy with biodiversity for development. In the name of development, we are clearing the forests on the basis of this immense wealth of nature i.e. when saws are used on trees, not only the tree is cut, but the life cycle of all the living beings is severely affected. The cycle of rain-sun-rain breaks. Due to large scale felling of trees, many areas of the world are facing drought conditions. Like Shivji entangled carbon dioxide in his hair, if forests are cut, where will this carbon go? The way humans have destroyed the forest, land, animals, water and other life. The result of this is that today we have come to stand in this condition. Because of the amount of consumption we have done today, we need 1.66 Earth to meet our needs. Now it is necessary to think that our life, our economy and our health are all dependent on biodiversity. We have to understand that we humans exist from nature and not nature exists from humans. Therefore, conservation of biodiversity is the shared responsibility of all mankind.
(The author, a noted environmentalist, is the Earth Day Network Star Year 2020 and North India Coordinator for the Green Olympiad on Environment (TERI).)
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