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Literature Review: Biodiversity Loss
Lekendrea Frazier
School of Undergraduate Studies, Excelsior University
LA498: Liberal Arts Capstone
Professor Christina Clarke
November 20, 2022
Introduction
The world is presently experiencing unmatched biodiversity problems that have a negative impact on food, water, and health safety. It also impacts the progress of nature’s contribution to individuals and the presence of many non-human species. The intensity of the problem causes the recognition of determining biodiversity conservation objectives and initiatives that would assist in addressing other main encounters like climate change and striving to improve the well-being of all. By focusing on these problems, biodiversity management is a fundamentally value-burdened, mission-oriented initiative and practice. However, conservation initiatives can be appropriated and adapted to diverse concerns like nature’s inherent value, poverty reduction, the financial importance of natural resources, the rights of an indigenous group, and cultural diversity.
Biodiversity Loss
Overpopulation worldwide is a key contributor to biodiversity loss and a major barrier to equally using the environment and important resources with other species. However, those worried about biodiversity loss advocating more conservation have failed to support the smaller human population. Talking about population issues can be thought-provoking. However, discussing the major cause of biodiversity loss is necessary for the strides made by environmentalists to succeed. Complete management of the globe’s remaining biodiversity causes challenging development and focuses on overpopulation and human economies, which are closely associated. Cardinale et al (2012) demonstrates that overpopulation is one of the essential factors contributing to biodiversity loss and that population reduction creates a reasonable potential for ecological restoration. This notion is supported by Cafaro, Hansson and Gotmark, 2022, who believe that conservation environmentalists should actively support smaller populations considering their role in conserving biodiversity.
Overpopulation is evident when individuals are relocating wild nature in an extreme way that some species become extinct. It also occurs when human beings are degrading the biological network and state at a rate that endangers the future generation. Since population increase leads to substantial biodiversity losses, population decrease can easily address the problem (Cafaro, Hansson & Gotmark, 2022; Cortes-Capano et al., 2022). Being equal would mean that smaller populations give or leave enough space to aid in the survival of other animal species. Therefore, this opportunity is observed in some parts of Europe where there is a high population. However, at the same time, it is the only continent that stops the current population expansion. According to Cafaro et al. (2022), the total population in Europe has remained constant for the last few years, with the number of its rural residents reducing by 20% since 1960, thereby leading to a widespread reduction in biodiversity loss.
Joint action for protection always results in value-associated interests within a particular culture, particularly in multicultural communities and intercultural collaboration. Also, value encounters between different parties become ethically challenging when the values of one party, like environmentalists, result in decisions and measures that demonstrate the violation of ethical responsibilities or claims of another conflicting party, like a local community in the protection area (Cardinale et al., 2012; Ikeke, 2021; Roberts, 2022). Value disagreements can emerge because of land allocations, establishing secure regions for biodiversity, or providing spaces for commodity production that symbolize extractive application and biased distribution of the paybacks and burdens. In this context, conflicts are always complex when following one of the choices, as it would mean superseding or going against some other essential values. It also becomes difficult when actors support distinct opinions concerning handling the conflict.
Disregarding these conflicts or trying to preserve biodiversity from a one sided view can cause unwanted repercussions like worsening prejudices or increasing violence, even though problematic at certain times (Cortes-Capano et al., 2022: Johnson et al., 2021; Roberts, 2022). Participating in the multi-faceted difficulty in management policy-making procedures supports achieving socio-financial and environmental objectives in the long term prospective. To achieve this, biodiversity management necessitates proper engagement with many values and the availability of different moral views supporting formations of right and wrong actions (Roberts, 2022). Moral issues surrounding biodiversity management focus on regulating questions concerning what should be protected, how and why, regulatory actions and the probable conflicts. Ethical reasoning impacts financial, political, and other associated societal decisions that eventually lead to biodiversity loss by activating its main causative factors. In addition, ethical reasoning has an impact on individuals’ views of issues, important aspects in solving them and the personality to support and adhere to the guidelines to solve them.
As asserted by Cortes-Capano et al. (2022), involvement in moral reasoning is important as it shapes individuals’ actions and is effective in biodiversity reduction and management. Moral views can sometimes stand on several equally important views and guidelines that are intricate to one another. Hoffman et al. (2021) have the same view that public discussion and policy-making concerning the international biodiversity problem have followed the western normative standpoints. In this case, right actions follow the guidelines where right actions make important use of the greatest good and not the greatest number. Also, these stands can reduce the space for appropriate discussions and concentrate on points concerning the correct preservation plans without providing equal respect to solutions that cannot tackle the selected approach. Even though the present arguments demonstrate various, sometimes contradictory moral positions, other ethical approaches are mainly understated.
Some of the moral approaches that have encountered less consideration or been overgeneralized in the mainstream preservation address include Hinduism, Buddhism, and virtue morals (Cortes-Capano et al., 2022). The request for inclusivity in diversity management that ignores important aspects of justice is in danger of being suppressed by marginal opinions through creating a worldwide yet morally non-inclusive management agenda. Moreover, disregarding various and sometimes conflicting moral views is unfair and reduces the probability of the preservation measures having a lasting positive influence on people and other species.
Current international appraisals of conserved regions demonstrate that indigenous-controlled lands have increased levels of biodiversity compared to safeguarded regions under conventional control. Also, most of these factors result from lasting and extensive associations and reliance on fire, which has been used as a gadget for managing landscapes for many years (Cardinale et al., 2012; Hoffman et al., 2021; Ikeke, 2021). Even though Indigenous fire stewardship (IFS) might appear counterintuitive to support biodiversity, particularly in dry regions that are prone to natural fires, it has the potential to reduce the seriousness of wildfires when they are encountered by decreasing the volume of accessible fuels and introducing vegetation that does not support wildfires. Through the use of controlled fire, people can preserve the environment as a precise or more preferred situation. Many living things like plants and animals have adapted themselves to fire occurrences, strength and type based on their location worldwide.
Previous accounts like growth are always linked with and depend on expectable fire cycles, most of which are either completely or partially regulated by people. Notwithstanding the sudden adjustments to cultural and lightning fire systems that previously occurred, IFS comes with a powerful evolutionary force concerning the availability and attributes of biomes worldwide (Hoffman et al., 2021). Even though the control, occurrence and intensity of the fire are unique to cultural groups, similar fire management practices exist worldwide and substantially influence biodiversity and individual associations. For instance, worldwide ethnographic appraisals of traditional fire knowledge and control provide instant and lasting management goals accomplished through cultural burning. Similar to the research results by Ikeke (2021), clearing the environment or fire impacts on the environment, particularly harvesting the wanted food plants, was the collective reason for the fire. According to Roberts (2022), combining different data improves people’s understanding of the connection between IFS and biodiversity apart from the more scarcely concentrated biodiversity literature.
As stated by Hoffman et al. (2021), the worldwide appraisal has established particular similarities in the operational application of mixed-serious fire to establish a living environment in many forests. The authors also identified examples of indigenous people staying in the same environment but using different fire management systems associated with the unique diet necessities (Hoffman et al., 2021; Cortes-Capano., 2022; Cafaro, Hansson & Gotmark, 2022). For instance, indigenous people who depend on forests as their main food source only sometimes use fire as always expected. Indigenous fire stewardship has different descriptions but is dependably a system of environment succession management that impacts biodiversity.
Different factors lead to biodiversity loss, with global warming being the key one. When carbon dioxide is discharged into the environment from burning fossil-like coal and other associated industrial activities, climate change is increased due to the increase in global temperatures. Moreover, the increase in extreme temperatures also has a negative impact on plants and animals and other species in their environments (Cafaro, Hansson & Gotmark, 2022; Ikeke, 2021; Roberts, 2022). This has caused massive ecosystem destruction since the increased temperatures have become extreme. Due to the increase in global temperatures, the ocean temperatures also increase and become much warmer, thereby killing some sea animals and organisms that are not used to the rising ocean temperatures. The increase in sea level and extreme temperatures precipitate the surrounding vapors, causing climate change and deterioration in biodiversity.
Regardless of the importance of biodiversity, it is extremely endangered by numerous aspects like climate change, water pollution, an increase in population, urban development, conflicts, and industrialization, among others. Many authors have acknowledged that global warming has caused a serious threat to biodiversity. Climate change is one of the serious environmental dangers to the globe and the well-being of other living organisms, as indicated by global governments. Numerous other aspects that have led to increased biodiversity loss include the loss of the environment, living things, poaching, and deforestation. According to Ikeke (2021), the economy is the other immediate cause of biodiversity loss. The financial objective of for-profit and treasures supported European expansionism. Additionally, financial development, automation and globalization have led to the readjustment of biodiversity as nature is observed as a resource and deconsecrated. Moreover, missionary actions supporting religions that observe indigenous cultural beliefs have also enhanced the destruction of native cultures.
Artificial intelligence is presently being used to determine the diversity of aquatic life. Most of the authors have concentrated on how diversity has changed, with most of them focusing on the biotic and abiotic forces that have led to the changes. The article by Roberts (2022) demonstrates the need to support the need to reduce biodiversity loss through measures like building a shared future. It is necessary to conduct a census on various species and how much the current extinction rates have been underestimated. Various studies have indicated that tremendous change in biodiversity has been influenced biotically, which are living organisms within an ecosystem and, abiotically, nonliving components (Cafaro, Hansson & Gotmark, 2022). Some viable solutions to biodiversity loss include documenting taxonomy and machine learning. Presently, there is undisputable proof that biodiversity loss impacts environmental societies’ effectiveness in capturing biologically important resources. Studies have indicated that a decrease in the number of functional groups of living things decreases the effectiveness by which the entire society obtains biologically important resources and changes them into biomass.
According to Cardinale et al. (2012), plant litter diversity improves putrefaction and recycling of materials after the death of living things despite the impact seeming to be less powerful compared to other procedures. Biodiversity impacts appear substantially reliable across different types of living things and environments. The consistency demonstrates that different fundamental guidelines determine how the organization of societies impacts the functioning of the bionetwork (Roberts, 2022; Ikeke, 2021; Hoffman et al., 2021). Since there are exclusions to this argument based on certain environments and procedures, they provide opportunities to understand the limits that compel the biodiversity effects. The impact of biodiversity in any environment is saturating, and this explains why the increase in change is directly associated with an increase in biodiversity loss. Studies show that original losses of biodiversity in different environments have substantially negligible impacts on the associated functions (Cortes-Capano et al., 2022; Cafaro, Hansson & Gotmark, 2022). However, increasing losses always result in increasing rates of change. Most studies do not have quantitative approximations concerning the level of biodiversity at which the alterations in the environmental functions become important for different procedures, and this is still believed to be an active topic of research.
Conclusion
Overpopulation is a key contributor to biodiversity loss, and that explains why many conservation agencies and people advocating more conservation have failed to support the smaller human population. Due to overpopulation, people are degrading the biology network at a rate that endangers the future generation. Joint action for protection always results in value-associated interests within a particular culture. Value disagreements can arise because of land allocations, establishing secure regions for biodiversity, or providing spaces for commodity production that symbolize extractive application and biased distribution of the paybacks and burdens. Disregarding these conflicts or trying to preserve biodiversity from a one sided or independent view can cause unwanted repercussions like worsening prejudices or increasing conflicts. Biodiversity management calls for proper engagement of many values and the availability of different moral views supporting formations of right and wrong actions. Involvement in moral reasoning is important as it shapes individuals’ actions and effectively manages biodiversity reduction and its management. Indigenous-controlled lands have increased levels of biodiversity compared to safeguarded regions under conventional control. Climate change caused by increased global warming also contributes to biodiversity loss.
References
Cafaro, P., Hansson, P., & Gotmark, F. (2022). Overpopulation is a major cause of biodiversity loss and smaller human populations are necessary to preserve what is left. Biological Conservation, 272, 109646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109646
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., … & Naeem, S. (2012). Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486(7401), 59-67.
Cortes-Capano, G., Hausmann, A., Di Minin, E., & Kortetmaki, T. (2022). Ethics in biodiversity conservation: The meaning and importance of pluralism. Biological Conservation, 275, 109759. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109759).
Hoffman, K. M., Davis, E. L., Wickham, S. B., Schang, K., Johnson, A, Larking, T., Lauriault, P. N, Quynh Le, N, Swerdfager, E., & Trant, A. J. (2021). Conservation of Earth’s biodiversity is embedded in indigenous fire stewardship. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32). http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105073118
Ikeke, M. O. (2021). The role of Climate Ethics in biodiversity conservation. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 10(3), 205. http://doi.org/10.14207/ejsd.2021.v10n3p205
Roberts, R. G. (2022). Addressing biodiversity loss by building a shared future. PLOS Biology, 20(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001690