How will Biodiversity Loss affect our global environment?

Biodiversity, the variation of life forms in the planet is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution and consists of millions of different species. It is common in nature for species to become extinct but human activities have speed up this process and the world may be a facing the biggest mass extinction since the last ice age. The loss of biodiversity will have substantial impacts on human health. The demand for energy in the past 200 years, mainly fossil fuels, is one of the primary causes of biodiversity loss. In addition, agriculture is dependent on biodiversity but has been the greatest cause for biodiversity loss. We must learn to balance social, economic, political and environmental values in order to preserve and even reverse biodiversity loss.

Biodiversity plays a huge impact on our daily lives even though many of us don’t recognize it. It affects us from the foods we eat to the clothes we wear to the medicine we use. There are about 1.4 million discovered species and another 10 to 20 million yet undiscovered species. These organisms might hold the key to many of the world’s problems. Even the smallest microbes and bacteria are responsible for transforming waste to useful products. Unfortunately human activity has been threatening biodiversity and has already left its marks. Losing one species can have a ripple effect where all the other organisms’ dependant on the endangered organism can face a serious threat of extinction.

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In recent years, environmental change has been having a bigger effect on healthcare than it ever did in the past. For example, the deforestation of rainforests has disease linkages such as the avian flu and the West Nile Virus. In addition, 1 billion people who depend on local food are at the risk of malnutrition from factors such as drought, loss of soil fertility and overfishing and this is all due to the loss of biodiversity. Because of biodiversity loss, ecosystems have lost their capacity to remove wastes from the environment. If the problem continues, there will be global waste ...

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