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Biodiversity
The term biodiversity stands for “biological diversity,” according to the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, the term was first coined in 1985 by Walter Rosin. Rosin defined it as “inherited information contained across all levels of variation,” including several levels. These levels are broken down into the genes, individual species, communities, and entire ecosystems. Scientists, however, tend to focus on three major types of biological diversity: species, genetics, and ecosystems.

Why is Biodiversity Important To Us?
The different species and ecosystems within today’s society hold vital roles in keeping our climate stable. Over the years climate change has worsened, many factors caused this, but the biological life in our ecosystem plays a far more essential role than one might think. Damian Carrington provides vital examples of how the climate is impacted by animals such as the forest monkey or even a coral reef. He mentions how bizarre animals like a spider monkey eat fruits where the seeds are used on trees to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Different ecosystems also play into climate as the coral reef helps protect the shores from tsunamis and floods. Without these animals and plants, our environment would worsen, which we might connect to climate change right now. The World Conservative Union has estimated the amount of money provided by the different ecosystems to be around 33 Trillion dollars a year. As of right now, we are facing a future of turmoil. All the major suppliers we buy from, whether food or clothes, all rely on the products created in a particular ecosystem. Everything depends on the biodiversity on our planet, ranging from our water to medication and disease control.

How We View Biological Life
Our ecosystem is fragile, we are given the resources from natural life to sustain a healthy climate, but humans do not view life as equal; animals and plants are seen as unimportant unless they are part of our everyday lives. The Cofrin Center presents this idea as being instrumental or inherent value where animals and plants are instrumental because they are “useful to humans.” Due to this thinking, humans care less for those who hold intrinsic value, meaning they simply exist, and thus we do not care for them. We are killing millions of life forces that may be vital to our ecosystem without realizing it through oil spills and deforestation. The Pope of the Vatican had recently made a statement regarding life other than humans, saying how they are our brothers and sister. This thinking had not been brought forth before in the church, and he used this argument to bring the idea of climate change into the church in hopes of finding new ways to fix our environment.

How Biodiversity has decreased
When looking at the rates in which biodiversity has decreased, think about tigers which have declined almost 95%, and to make it worse, we are killing off many “species 1000 times faster than the natural rate”. Due to this number, one can infer the rate of decrease in the diverse biological life present today. The cause of this is human error, from greenhouse gasses to fungal diseases. Pollution seriously affects most sea life from oils, gasses, and plastics that seep into the ocean; dolphins and orcas are one of the most noticeable drops in population. However, the most affected ecosystems are those of lakes and rivers, according to Carrington, and have caused freshwater animals to have dropped 81% in population since 1970.

We Can’t Adress One Without the Other
The decrease in our ecosystems and the impending climate change are two separate topics that overlap. We, as a society, are so focused on climate itself that the thought blinds us that climate change is only caused by pollution; this thought process isn’t wrong, but it is not the whole truth. Without biodiversity, our planet would be barren, lacking all life forms because there are no life forms to sustain it. Without animals, we cannot feed insects, and without insects, we cannot grow plants. Without plants, we cannot establish an ecosystem that can sustain life, meaning we cannot create oxygen. Every life form plays a role in keeping an ecosystem alive, which helps control climate change. There are life forms such as monkeys, which eat a fruit that has seeds crucial to trees to take away carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If CO2 rises, then so does the temperature releasing more water into the air, which then causes more greenhouse gasses to evaporate into the atmosphere. There are many more connections between biodiversity and climate change, which is why we need to spend an equal amount of time improving our ecosystems and wildlife to strive towards improving climate change.