Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth and we human beings, we directly depend on biodiversity to survive. Biodiversity helps to maintain balance in the natural world and prevents living organisms from becoming extinct.
It also provides a variety of food and other resources like building materials, medicines and other materials for our use and helping us to keep the environment clean and healthy.
Biodiversity is essential for human health, food security, fresh air and drinking water, functioning ecosystems that provide resources that neither can be replaced nor replicated fully under any circumstances.
The biodiversity book by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO; Morton & Hill 2014) describes 5 core (and interacting) values that humans place on biodiversity:
- Economic: Biodiversity provides humans with raw materials for consumption and production. Many livelihoods, such as those of farmers, fishers and timber workers, are dependent on biodiversity.
- Ecological life support: Biodiversity provides functioning ecosystems that supply oxygen, clean air and water, pollination of plants, pest control, wastewater treatment and many ecosystem services.
- Recreation: Many recreational pursuits rely on our unique biodiversity, such as birdwatching, hiking, camping and fishing. Our tourism industry also depends on biodiversity.
- Cultural: The Australian culture is closely connected to biodiversity through the expression of identity, through spirituality and through aesthetic appreciation. Indigenous Australians have strong connections and obligations to biodiversity arising from spiritual beliefs about animals and plants.
- Scientific: Biodiversity represents a wealth of systematic ecological data that help us to understand the natural world and its origins.
