Biodiversity is the variety of living organisms on Earth, including animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms. Each of these species has its own unique peculiarities and works in synergy with the others to maintain balance in ecosystems and sustain life.
Interesting notes on biodiversity
- Biodiversity is often overlapped with the protection of big, exotic animals, such as tigers, but there is actually a huge variety of life in ecosystems that is not always visible. Few people know that there are more living organisms in a spoonful of land than there are people on earth;
- In indigenous lands, often subject to land grabbing, biodiversity and the traditional knowledge needed to manage it are fading. Local and indigenous varieties of food are estimated to have up to 1,000 times more nutrient content than the most common varieties;
- Due to the direct and indirect impacts of human activities, the abundance of naturally occurring species in terrestrial ecosystems has declined by an average of 23% since prehistoric times.
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When we talk about biodiversity, we are not just talking about how many different species live in an ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to variation in genetic, phenotypic, phylogenetic and functional attributes, as well as changes in abundance and distribution over time and space within and among species, biological communities and ecosystems.
Simply put, biodiversity translates into wealth for nature and for us. Preserving this diversity enables ecosystems to provide nutritious food and clean water, regulate disease, support crop pollination and counter soil erosion. These vital services are all free. However, their value is unfortunately ignored in the assessments of the costs and benefits of human interventions in nature.
There is a close link between the climate crisis and the dramatic loss of biodiversity that is unfolding. We are witnessing a global extinction rate up to hundreds of times higher than the average of the past 10 million years. On the one hand, the impacts of climate change make ecosystems more fragile, exacerbating biodiversity loss. On the other hand, biodiversity restoration and conservation is a powerful strategy to mitigate climate change through the diverse functions performed by healthy ecosystems.
zeroCO2 and biodiversity
zeroCO2 is committed to developing projects that regenerate ecosystems degraded by deforestation and monocultures, thus contributing to the restoration of local biodiversity.
