Biodiversity Loss Threatens Human Well-Being

T he diversity of life on Earth is dramatically affected by human alterations of ecosystems [1]. Compelling evidence now shows that the reverse is also true: biodiversity in the broad sense affects the properties of ecosystems and, therefore, the benefi ts that humans obtain from them. In this article, we provide a synthesis of the most crucial messages emerging from the latest scientifi c literature and international assessments of the role of biodiversity in ecosystem services and human well-being. Human societies have been built on biodiversity. Many activities indispensable for human subsistence lead to biodiversity loss, and this trend is likely to continue in the future. We clearly benefi t from the diversity of organisms that we have learned to use for medicines, food, fi bers, and other renewable resources. In addition, biodiversity has always been an integral part of the human experience, and there are many moral reasons to preserve it for its own sake. What has been less recognized is that biodiversity also infl uences human well-being, including the access to water and basic materials for a satisfactory life, and security in the face of environmental change, through its effects on the ecosystem processes that lie at the core of the Earth's most vital life support systems (Figure 1). Three recent publications from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [2–4], an initiative involving more than 1,500 scientists from all over the world [5], provide an updated picture of the fundamental messages and key challenges regarding biodiversity at the global scale. Chief among them are: (a) human-induced changes in land cover at the global scale lead to clear losers and winners among species in biotic communities; (b) these changes have large impacts on ecosystem processes and, thus, human well-being; and (c) such consequences will be felt disproportionately by the poor, who are most vulnerable to the loss of ecosystem services. Biodiversity in the broad sense is the number, abundance, composition, spatial distribution, and interactions of genotypes, populations, species, functional types and traits, and landscape units in a given system (Figure 2). Biodiversity infl uences ecosystem services, that is, the benefi ts provided by ecosystems to humans, that contribute to making human life both possible and worth living [4] (Box 1). As well as the direct provision of numerous organisms that are important for human material and cultural life (Figure 1, path 1), biodiversity has well-established or putative effects on a number …