The Importance Of Biodiversity

2007 Words9 Pages
Earth holds a vast diversity of living organisms and immense varieties of Habitat and ecosystem. Biodiversity is the variety and variability among living organisms from all sources, including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic eco¬systems and the ecological complexes; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems (CBD 1992). The term biodiversity, the short form of biological diversity, was coined by Walter G. Rosen in 1985. The fundamental to ecologically sustainable development is conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. An environment rich in biological diversity offers the broadest array of options for sustainable economic activity, for sustaining human welfare and for adapting to change. Global Biodiversity Assessment estimates that a total number of animal and plant species to be between 13 and 14 million (Heywood 1995). It further records that so far only 1.75 million species have been described and studied. UNEP-WCMC (2000) estimated around 2, 70,000 species of vascular plants and 52,000 animals (vertebrates). Nearly 45% of the World’s vascular plant species occur in closed tropical forests of the world (Myers et al., 2000).Tropical Forests are species rich ecosystems and provide valuable productive and consumptive value ecosystem services that impact different aspects of human society (Costanza, et al., 1997; Fearnside, 1997; Pearce, 2001). The global loss of biodiversity has caused much concern because the economic and