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2 - Biodiversity in the modern world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Charles Perrings
Charles Perrings
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Summary

Widening horizons

What do we know about the role of biodiversity in the modern world? What are the effects of biodiversity change on the two-fifths of the terrestrial system that have been fundamentally transformed by humankind? While the shape of the Holocene extinction is familiar to many – certainly to all those who work in the biological sciences – the way in which changes in species abundance and richness affect human activities is not. Most biodiversity research has focused on natural systems, and not on the role of biodiversity in supporting the production of goods and services of value to people. Research on agro-biodiversity, for example, is a vanishingly small proportion of total agricultural and forestry research. There are relatively few studies of the biodiversity in urban ecosystems, and almost no studies of the impact of changes in species diversity on ecosystem services in urban areas. The literature on biodiversity and health is primarily concerned with the role of species diversity in affecting disease transmission in natural ecosystems. The literature on invasive species is more broadly concerned with the impact of invaders on both managed and unmanaged systems, but it too focuses on the role of invaders in disrupting existing, functioning systems. The result is that we understand much about the ecology of biodiversity change, but little about its consequences for the production and consumption processes at the core of all human activity. Yet these are the things we need to understand if we are to understand directed biodiversity change.

Type
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Our Uncommon Heritage
Biodiversity Change, Ecosystem Services, and Human Wellbeing
 , pp. 39 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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