Biodiversity Reflections

Biodiversity is defined by it's name. Diversity of life! As stated in Tomorrow's Biodiversity, "Biodiversity is the fabric of life. It provides the conditions for life's emergence and maintenance, and the many different ways in which that life is expressed. The erosion of biodiversity and the erosion of cultural diversity are related."

It is very important to understand that every being and living organism has a certain impact in society and in the ecology. Although, us humans may have the upper hand in layman's terms, this does not mean we have the right to do as we please. All life forms have an intrinsic worth and that must be respected. As Vandana Shiva states in What is Biodiversity and Why it is Important, "Just as our bodies maintain their temperature, the earth's equilibrium is maintained through ecological processes in which biodiversity plays a central role."
The instability of one species may also be a threat to other species that are supported through the same ecological process.

In today's day and age globalization has accelerated the breakdown of biodiversity. The genetic diversity in crops has decreased substantially impairing biodiversity and food security. About 75% of the diversity of agriculture crops is estimated to have been lost at the turn of the century. Scary facts such as, the entire pork economy of the world is based on four breeds. In China alone forty to fifty breeds were once farmed but they have been replaced by hybrid pigs from the "four global breeds," (Shiva 48-49).

We must be more concernced with the act of conserving, but also with the economic issues that are affected by lack of biodiversity.