What Is Biodiversity and Why Is It So Important?

"All life forms have an intrinsic worth and a right to evolve freely on their own terms. Humankind is one among millions of other species. It does not have a right to push other species to extinction, or to manipulate them for greed, profit and power without concern for their wellbeing." (Shiva 40)

Here Vandana Shiva assumes that all life forms have worth and rights as humans do. I feel as though all living things should be protected. I don't know exactly why but it feels right to take care of living things, whether it be humans or animals or plants.

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"Human beings are clearly highly ignorant of other members of the Earth Family and, at least int he Western worldview, have thought of themselves as sitting on top of a biodiversity pyramid or tree rather than forming a part of a complex web of life." (Shiva 44)

I think in my life I have thought of humanity the way Shiva is describing. I picture humans as the leaders of the world and on whom the well being of nature depends. Perhaps it's not that way. Rather, humanity is part of a larger system that is connected and relies on all its parts.

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"As biodiversity disappears, the poor are further impoverished and deprived of the healthcare and nutrition that biodiversity provides." (Shiva 50) 

I didn't realize that poorer countries depended in such a way on the diversity of the life forms in their land. I didn't know that there could be so much use for so many different species of plants, for example. 

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"Quinine, digitalis and morphine are derived from plants, and even in the USA 40 per cent of all prescriptions still depend on natural sources." (Shiva 53) 

Shiva here informs that plants are very useful still for humanity. I didn't know that such a high percentage of prescriptions that help to heal so many different illnesses depended on natural sources such plants. 

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Jared Diamond - A Tale of Two Farms

"Will tourists someday stare mystified at the rusting hulks of New York's skyscrapers, much as we stare today at the jungle-overgrown ruins of Maya cities?" (Diamond 20)

What Diamond is saying is that it is possible that the big cities of today such as those in New York will one day be ancient sites that people visit for entertainment just as today people visit Mayan cities which once were the greatest cities of their time but are now ruins. Diamond suggests that the reason so many great civilizations have fallen is that its citizens depleted their land's resources. 

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"The fifth set of factors--the society's responses to its environmental problems--always proves significant." (Diamond 27) 

Here Diamond talks about how there can be many factors providing a society's collapse, but only one is meaningful every time: "the society's responses to its environmental problems". (Diamond 27) For example, Norwegians who moved to Iceland thought the land there, was the same as the land they owned in Norway. However, the land turned out to be very different and they ended up destroying much of its topsoil and forests. They later responded to the trouble they had created by taking on stronger ways of protecting the environment and are now among the highest on national average per-capita income in the world. How about that for responding to environmental problems! 

This is a picture of a place in Iceland! 

Photo by www.sceneriies.com 

"Hence the risk arises that, if your trade partner becomes weakened for any reason (including environmental damage) and can no longer supply the essential import or the cultural tie, your own society may become weakened as a result." (Diamond 31)

Often a society will have a neighboring or distant society that provides for it in such ways as selling products produced in that society. This can be of great help but also risky. The reason it can be risky is that if the helpful society is weakened, the same can happen to the society that receives from it.

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"I'm more interested in environmental issues because of what I see as their consequences for people than because of their consequences for birds." (Diamond 33)

Diamond has been accused of valuing nature over people. However, even though he admits he is very involved with nature and does things such as bird watching, he values the results of what is done to the environment more because of what it does for people than for what it does for the animals that live in it such as birds. 

Plan B

What I've read so far from "Plan B 4.0" by Lester R. Brown, has helped me to think about the relationship between economics, production, and the environment. Brown highlights the main issues going on in the world among those three factors, and then introduces an alternative called "Plan B" to reverse the issues such as food shortages created by "soil erosion, falling water tables, and rising carbon emissions." (Brown 4)


"Whatever happens to the wheat and rice harvests in [China and India] will affect food prices everywhere." (Brown 6)


We need each other to have the food we need. China and India are the two leading wheat producers of the world, and because of the melting of mountain glaciers on which the two country's irrigation systems depend, the world will face a threat to food security that is bigger than it's ever faced. (Brown 6)

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"This massive acquisition of land to grow food in other countries is one of the largest geopolitical experiments ever conducted." (Brown 10)

Brown is referring to countries who have surpassed their own land and water resources, and buy land from other countries in order to produce for their own people. It's interesting because the countries that are selling their land are those that need that land the most. One such country is Ethiopia, in which the World Food Programme (WFP) works to feed 4.6 million people. (Brown 11)

"Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme." (Brown 14)

This means basically that we are using up the world's supplies in ways in which will eventually leave us without them, and cause a shortage. It looks good for now but soon it will go bad. For example, the world's major aquifers were being overpumped as of mid-2009, and we have more irrigation water than before that started, but once the aquifers are used up, the system will collapse by leaving us with a shortage of irrigation water. (Brown 14)

"our global Ponzi economy was not intended to collapse. It is on a collision path because of market forces, perverse incentives, and poorly chosen measures of progress." (Brown 15)

Unfortunately the way the global economy has worked in the recent past is thinking short-term. It does not regard the limited amount of resources of natural systems. It doesn't include the complete costs of production. Brown gives the example that when we use electricity from a coal-fired power plant we get billed monthly by the local utility. However, we don't get charged for the climate change caused by burning coal.  (Brown 16)

Photo by bwf-group.de

The Precious Everglades

Endgame by Michael Grunwald was a very informative excerpt from "The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise", that helped me see how the Everglades has been and still is a very important area that can't be ignored by those in power.

"The basic message was that it made no sense for the federal government to green-light a major airport at the edge of the Everglades at the same time it wanted taxpayers to spend $8 billion to restore the Everglades." (Grunwald 82)

                                               Photo by harvardpolitics.com

The above quote describes the conflict between building and restoring in the Everglades. The Everglades is an area that many people want protected but at the same time other people have interests such as building an airport there, and it creates a conflict between the two groups of people. I am leaning more towards the restoration of the Everglades since I'm learning how valuable it is to so many species living there.

"But at some level this must fail: just because the policymakers all agree that the sun rises in the west doesn't make it so." (Grunwald 91)

I agree with the above quote originally written by ecologist Stuart Pimm, because even if it's true that all these policymakers are excited and support the bill being discussed it doesn't mean that the bill is actually going to make a difference.

"'We are seeing a rare moment in the closing days of this Congress: both great political parties coming together and doing the right thing', Shaw crowed." (Grunwald 94)

                                                    Photo by nfb.org

I find the way Clay Shaw describes the moment to be exciting. It makes me realize that when it comes to something such as protecting the Everglades, normally opposing groups can come together for a good cause.

"...but Graham really wanted to restore the Everglades because it was singular, because it distinguished south Florida from other sprawling concatenations of tract homes, strip malls, CVS, and KFC." (Grunwald 99)

                                            Photo by bbc.com

This describes how precious the Everglades is. Even though preserving it can reap benefits such as providing aquifers and promoting ecotourism, the uniqueness of it calls for preservation. I've usually looked at the Everglades as a swamp down in the south of Florida. But this makes me reconsider that.  It makes me want to visit it in the future.