Is maintaining biodiversity essential for human sustainability?

Question

Environmental science

Answer 1

Hi funwoods

This is more of an essay question than a simple "yes" or "no" question. :o)

To some extent an answer will depend on how rigorously you define "biodiversity" and "sustainability". For our purposes here let's define each quite simply: we'll define biodiversity in terms of the spread of species across the bioweb, and "sustainability" as the continued existence of humans (rather than, say, the perpetuating of our current social system). At this base level the answer *must* be "we can't know". The reason that we can't know is that the bioweb is a critical state system, and critical state systems obscure simple linear cause and effect relationships. Critical state systems lie between the simple linear equilibrium systems you study in high school science and fully non-linear or chaotic systems.

The sustainability of any species in a critical state bioweb has complex triggers: for example it is (at least in theory) possible for the failure of a single species somewhere in the web to trigger a catastrophic collapse (major extinction event) across the whole web. This is due to the complex interdependencies between species in the web. It is possible, then, that the failure of a single species might lead to the extinction of humans. On the other hand, the extinction of a great number of species might not have an effect on our long term sustainability at all.

One thing you can't expect to do is given in to indecision paralysis and desperately try to preserve the bioweb in its current state, hoping that that ensures our own future survival. The key feature of evolution is *change*. The natural order of life on this planet is eventual extinction: more than 99% of species which have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. The mean life-time for a mammalian species of our size is about 2 million years. On the face of that, expecting long term sustainability might be a pipe dream, however there are species which have carved out successful niches they've been able to exploit for very very long times. In the end I think adaptability will be more essential to our own sustainability than biodiversity.


Hope this helps!
The Chicken

Answer 2

Yes, to an extent. If we think of it as a big pyramid on which we are the top stone, it makes sense that if we knock out too many lower species, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

LOL! It's like Jenga! How many blocks can we take out before we lose?

Answer 3

Yes. Everything on this earth is interlinked and the extinction of one species(plant mammal birds fish or whatever) will eventually lead to the extinction of another and then the next and so it will continue.It might take a thousand years be fore we as humans feel the effect but eventually it will impact on us as well.

Answer 4

maybe