Importance of biodiversity

|Importance of biodiversity |

|  |Many biologists who study biodiversity confine themselves to the objective assessment of ecological processes. Others |
| |believe that scientists should comment on the moral, philosophical and political aspects of biodiversity. |
| |The firstapproach risks losing many species of plants and animals to exploitation or development, whereas the second |
| |leads people to question the impartiality of scientific conclusions. Which do you think is preferable? |
| |Arguments for protecting biodiversity fall into two categories: |
| |Biodiversity hasan intrinsic value that is worth protecting regardless of its value to humans. This argument focuses on|
| |the conservation of all species, even if they are ecologically equivalent species. |
| |Biodiversity performs a number of ecological services for humankind that have economic, aesthetic or recreational value.|
| |This argument focuseson conserving ecologically nonequivalent species since ecologically equivalent ones are redundant |
| |in terms of services rendered |
| |(G. Bell, pers comm). |
| |Both points of view (intrinsicand anthropocentric) need not be contradictory, as they serve the same ultimate purpose. |
| |Yet they often are considered incompatible because they stem from two very different philosophies: one which views |
| |nature as innately valuable and one that regards it as economically valuable. |
| |Both the intrinsic value and theanthropocentric values are presented in this page. The debate regarding the value of |
| |biodiversity and the need to protect it is still very hotly contested. The reader is left to draw their own conclusions |
| |from the arguments presented. |
| | |
| |Intrinsic Value |
| |[pic] |
| |The first argument for the intrinsic value ofbiodiversity is the idea that humans are part of nature. |
| |"We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other |
| |creatures in the odyssey of evolution... Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, |
| |while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly thesole object of its quest, and that prior assumptions to this |
| |effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark." - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. |
| |The argument for conservation of biodiversity often emphasizes the need to facilitate continued evolution. As humans are|
| |and were part of nature, they benefited from the evolutionaryprocess. The tenet that humans are part of nature |
| |questions whether humans should endanger their own milieu and the process from which they stem. |
| |A corollary to the above argument is reflected in the Noah principle , named for the biblical Noah who saved one pair of|
| |every creature on earth in the Ark, which argues that the usefulness...