Biodiversity is the variety of different species on earth or within an ecosystem. So if we were to compare your average field to a rainforest, the rainforest has far higher biodiversity because there's a much wider range of different species there, from the animals and plants to the bacteria and fungi. Now if you're like me, you might feel that having a high biodiversity is a good thing in its own right.
because having lots of species on earth is nice. However, it actually has some very important functions as well. One of these is to make ecosystems stable.
If there are loads of different species in an ecosystem, then even if something happens to one of them, like they catch a disease and go extinct, the ecosystem itself will be okay, because there are so many other relationships that the other species can rely on. There are also more selfish reasons why biodiversity is important though. For example, we know of around 200,000 species of animals that act as pollinators to help us pollinate everything from apples to avocados. And more than half of new medical drugs are derived from living organisms in some way.
So if species keep going extinct, who knows what potential medicines we might lose. For the human species to survive and thrive, it's absolutely essential that we have a good level of biodiversity across the planet. Unfortunately though, we humans have a habit of damaging the environment, which reduces biodiversity, along with all of the benefits that it normally gives us. A big part of the problem is that there are now so many of us.
As we can see on this graph, in the past 1000 years, our population has increased from around 300 million to 7.7 billion. The other part of the problem is that each individual person puts a lot more pressure on the environment than we used to. By demanding ever higher standards of living and consumer goods like new phones, the latest clothes and our own cars, we have to use more and more raw materials and also more energy to put those materials together. Because we generally use natural resources much faster than they can be replaced, we could one day run out of them. just like we drove the western black rhino to extinction by poaching them for their horns.
Another issue is that to get these resources in the first place we often have to clear out the natural ecosystems that lived there before, which often involves processes like deforestation, which we see in another video. And as if all of this wasn't enough, we also produce loads of waste, both individually when we throw out our rubbish or flush the loo, and collectively. during the production of all the things that we buy.
And one way or another, this waste generally makes its way into the water, onto the land, or into the air. For example, sewage from our homes, toxic chemicals from industry, and the chemicals used in farming can all pollute lakes, rivers, and oceans, which can hurt the plants and animals that live there. Meanwhile, even though we bury our household waste in a landfill, and we fortify our nuclear waste underground in concrete, some toxic chemicals can still seep into the surrounding ecosystems.
Finally, lots of industrial processes, along with the burning of any fossil fuels, release chemicals like sulphur dioxide into the air, which can directly harm organisms, or cause acid rain. Regardless of the type of pollution though, all of it can harm organisms, either directly or indirectly. and so often changes ecosystems and reduces biodiversity.
On top of all of this is the release of greenhouse gases, which don't do much harm directly, but contribute to global warming, which we'll look at in the next video. On the bright side, we can fix all of these problems, either with changes in attitude, or with new technologies and techniques. Anyway, that's all for now, so I hope you found it useful. and we'll see you next time.