How Biodiversity Loss Threatens Your Future (and what you can do now)
Sue Senger
Nov 26, 2022
Loss of plant species leaves us swinging at the end of a short rope (Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash)
We may be spending more time talking about climate change these days, as storms and wildfires threaten and once flowing waters dry up, but we are not talking enough about biodiversity loss and what that means to our future.
The United Nations talks about the triple threat facing our planet: Climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution (waste). These three factors contribute significantly to the generation and spread of infectious disease. This makes sense. As we face erratic weather patterns, dying ecosystems, and waste overload, we become more and more vulnerable to diseases.
At the very same time as these factors are damaging our health and our planet, the key defenses we use to protect ourselves – antibiotics and antimicrobial drugs – are being rendered useless by the rise of super-spreaders. These antimicrobial resistant (AMR) strains of bacteria and disease do not respond to treatment. If the use of antibiotics and antimicrobials is not protected, more and more people will die world wide from infections that used to be treatable.
What does this have to do with biodiversity loss?
Everything.
Many of our most powerful medicines are derived from plants. Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) was originally derived from willow. Elderberry is used around the world to treat a wide variety of cold symptoms and health issues. Caffeine, derived from the coffee bean, is used in the treatment of migraines.
Elderberry is a traditional medicine used around the world (Photo by Maddy Weiss on Unsplash)
This list can go on and on . . . . but the point is that we have not discovered all the many ways in which plants can help heal our bodies. In the meantime, we are losing plants and ecosystem at an alarming rate.
A systematic analysis published in the Lancet (Jan 2022) indicates that 1.5 Million deaths in 2019 were associated with AMR lower respiratory infections. Drug resistant E. coli and strains of tuberculosis are spreading world wide.
While there is no certainty that a plant-based solution to AMR exists, without diverse plants to work with and select from, the chances of finding a solution narrow. Our ability to treat minor forms of illness with natural medicines while saving the “big gun” antibiotics only for extreme illness also becomes limited. Many essential oils made from plants are being studied for use in livestock and human health. Many more studies are needed to protect health through the triple threat.
And it is not just the loss of medicines
Our entire food system is also at extreme risk from biodiversity loss and this is a risk that cuts both ways in terms of ecosystem risks and human food system risks.
On the one hand, clearing land for agriculture has been responsible for the massive destruction of natural ecosystems and has contributed to the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species world wide.
Modern monoculture agriculture leaves our food system vulnerable to collapse (Photo by meriç tuna on Unsplash)
On the other hand, the use of modern monoculture practices has meant that of the 6000 plant species world wide that are cultivated for food, only 9 plant species account for 66% of global food production. This puts our food system at extreme risk as thousands of plant varieties fall into disuse and then disappear entirely.
Thus agriculture is both destroying natural ecosystems at a dizzying rate, while simultaneous narrowing our human food chain down to just a handful of plants, and worse still, just a handful of cultivars. This narrow food plant gene pool vastly limits our chances of finding plants that can produce food under the climate change and pollution conditions that are happening now. It is a practice, however, that is making a handful of people very rich while the rest go hungry.
