Aichi-Nagoya International E-Conference on the Post 2010 Biodiversity Target (ANIEC 2010)

ANIEC 2010 - Question 1

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What does biodiversity mean to you?

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Meaning of Biodiversity [#950]
Biodiversity is a broad definition that includes not only variety of living things, but also marvelous genomic library of Earth and multifarious landscapes coupled with complex ecological interrelations between different species.
This fantastic system provides us with everything that we need. Therefore it’s not just a nice sentence: “Biodiversity is our life!” and we have to go into the root of this principle. Many people are used to say that it doesn’t matter that some species, for example, red coral or Caucasian goat will disappear soon. They think that it will never affect them deeply.
But I like one wise man’s comparison. He describes biodiversity like a large library, which includes billion books – species. We didn’t read many of them, therefore we don’t know if it’s useful for us. We can take out some books and destroy it: we will not find that it’s heavy loss. Someday somebody will find that these species could be really meaningful for us, they could provide us with valuable medicine or means of water purification. But we have already lost them. We will never find an opportunity to read these books because we didn’t expect that it could be necessary for us.
In my opinion, it’s significant to remember that we shouldn’t reckon on our expectations in questions of biodiversity conservation. People should keep in mind that this dynamic and sustainable system – biodiversity allows us to outlive all external forces like solar activity changes or human impact. Therefore we have to respect our nature if we want to survive and to keep this chance for our children.
posted on 2010-05-13 07:10 UTC by Linda Toth, Arup
RE: Meaning of Biodiversity [#959]
I like that concept of special books on the Earth too, but not all people recognise its values, do you have any ideas for making all people know millions of millions of millions of these stories?
posted on 2010-06-20 12:58 UTC by Frédéric Rohart, L'Echo