New News Biology #70

How Human Waste Reduces Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variety of different species on earth or within an ecosystem. It has some very important functions as well:

Stabilization of the ecosystem - if one species within an ecosystem go extinct, biodiversity ensures that it wouldn’t largely effect the entire ecosystem as a whole, as there are so many other relationships within the ecosystem.

The making of drugs - we rely on many living organisms to derive drugs to cure diseases, but if species go extinct very quickly, who knows how many potentially useful drugs we may lose.

It is absolutely essential we have a good level of biodiversity. However, humans have reduced earth’s biodiversity over the years. In the last 1000 years or so, the global population has increased from 300 million to 7.7 billion humans, which is itself taking a huge toll on the environment. Also, each individual adds more pressure to the environment than they used to, as nowadays, people have a much higher standard of living, which demands much more raw materials and a lot more energy to put those raw materials together.

Often, this process of using up earth’s raw materials is faster than the speed at which these raw materials can be replaced, so we would inevitably run out at some point. Also, the process of harvesting these raw materials is itself damaging to the environment as it usually involves clearing out the natural ecosystem that once lived there (like the act of deforestation). We also produce a lot of waste, both individually and collectively, which one way or another can get into the air, water, or land. All this severely damages the environment, and ultimately reduces biodiversity.

On top of all that, there is the release of greenhouse gasses which contribute to global warming.

However, on the bright side, with ever evolving and improving techniques and practices, we can still do the right thing.