4 Values and uses of biodiversity

Dr. Felix Bast

epgp books

 

 

1.  Learning outcomes

  • To learn about tangible uses (goods) provided by the global biodiversity, including food, drugs, industrial products, genetic resources, and so on
  • To learn about intangible values (services) provided by the global biodiversity, including provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services and cultural services
  • To learn about inconspicuous services offered by the biodiversity including biocontrol, bioaugmentation, polyculture, integrated multi trophic aquaculture, biomimetics, habitat refugation and so on

2.    Concept map

3.      Description

3.1. Introduction

Planet Earth’s biodiversity plays a central role in the health and wellbeing of not only humans but also all other living beings. However, we know only the tip of the massive iceberg; it is estimated that more than 90% of the species remain to be discovered and it might even go extinct even before taxonomists could name and describe them. The known biodiversity is estimated to be around 2 million species, while the total unknown species varies between 8 million to one trillion. Vast majority of microorganisms remains undescribed and that is one of the major reason for this wide disparity in number of species estimates. We could culture only around 10000 species of microorganisms; vast majority of microorganisms can only be studied in situ using advanced techniques such as environmental DNA metagenomics.

An ecosystem consists of biologically interacting organisms and their physical environment, while the term biodiversity refers only the diversity of organisms. Values and uses are synonymous terms; nevertheless, these terms can be finely delineated as follows. Values refer the intangible, indirect uses of biodiversity, while uses refer the tangible, direct utility of the biodiversity. As the term Ecosystem goods and services are more popular, the ensuing discussion had been bifurcated into the goods and services provided by the biodiversity, for the sake of brevity.

3.2. Goods (uses) provided by the biodiversity

The global biodiversity provides a large number of goods that are directly used by the humanity. The most tangible goods is indeed food and agriculture, as without these the global human population would collapse. Crops, vegetable and fruit cultivation provide direct food and nutrition for the human sustenance. A large majority of humanity also depend upon animal-based food sources, including honey, dairy, poultry, and meat and fish products. The biodiversity also provide food for the sustenance of these animals in the form of forage and fodder. A large number of food additives, natural preservatives and natural colorants are also derived from the nature; examples include agar and carrageenan from marine algae as food additives; rosemary extract, vinegar, alcohol, and hopes as food preservatives, and turmeric as food colorant.

As per the current estimates, more than 50% of drugs of modern medicine currently available in the world’s markets are derived from organisms, and more than 80% of the world population depend upon the biodiversity for the supply of medicines of both modern medicine and traditional/alternative medicine. World’s indigenous communities have a rich repertoire of indigenous/traditional medicine, a subject covered under the discipline of ethnomedicine. Most of the world’s bioprospecting efforts are targeted towards these indigenous medicinal knowledge. Therefore, existence of the medicine and pharmaceutical industries directly depend upon the goods from biodiversity. In addition, the biodiversity provides goods for cosmetic (for example, aloe extracts and natural UV-B protectant), nutraceutical (examples include microbial probiotics like Yakult, spirulina and cod-liver oil supplements) industries.

There are a huge number of industrial products derived from the nature; examples include building and furnishing materials like timber and straw, textiles (cotton and silk), biodegradable biopolymers, leather and so on. A vast majority of world’s paper industries are dependent upon pulp obtained from forest resources. World’s automobile industry is dependent upon rubber, which is produced from the latex of rubber tree. Several natural pigments are being used for painting, marine natural products are used for the development of antifouling paints, some of the world’s toughest glues are developed from animal exudates including that of a marine barnacle, a large number of natural products are used as jewellery (examples include pearl, amber, ivory) and perfume (musk, ambergris, essential oils, sandalwood, etc.), and so on.

In addition to the direct tangible goods, biodiversity also provide rich genetic resources for the humanity. Examples include disease-resistance genes for cloning and development of genetically modified organisms that are disease resistant, genes coding for enzymes (insulin), biochemicals (Alkaline Phosphatases and Taq Polymerase) and drugs (key targets of cancer molecular pathways). Biodiversity goods also serves as an inspiration for the synthetic chemists and engineers to develop similar products. The disciplines of biomimetics and bionics were developed from this idea of imitating the nature for the product development. An example is the development of commercial product Velcro from the natural materials. Natural product structures provide a scaffold for the further modification and development of nature-identical synthetic products for the chemist’s, and structural database of natural products provide bioinformaticians to hunt for potential inhibitors for the key disease pathways, such as cancer.

 

A direct, albeit converted by natural processes, good from biodiversity is the so-called ‘fossil fuel’, coal and petroleum products. While coal is derived from terrestrial plants, petroleum is from marine plants, especially microscopic phytoplankton that live in the ocean surface waters and performing photosynthesis whereby fixing the atmospheric carbon dioxide into the stored biomolecules like sugars and starch. When these organisms dies, they sink down to the ocean floor along with the fixed biomolecules. These layers of dead plant matters form marine sediments that build one upon another for millions of years, and get crushed by the extreme hydrostatic pressure at the seabed, thus forming the crude oil. These fossil fuels are an example of non-renewable resources, as the production of these resources takes millions of years, its quick renewal is impossible. A human-mediated accelerated production of these resources are also not possible. Therefore, world’s stored fossil fuel resources are extremely limited and are rapidly diminishing.

3.3. Services (values) provided by the biodiversity

Biodiversity services can be defined as suite of intangible benefits that the biodiversity provide to the humanity. Biodiversity services can be grouped into four subdivisions; provisioning services, supporting services, regulatory services and cultural services, although many argue that such a quadrivium is arbitrary.

Provisioning services are production of renewable resources that the humanity is dependent upon. As these have already discussed under goods (uses), this section is being omitted because of redundancy. However, note that there are several intangible biodiversity services involved in the production of tangible goods. Perhaps the most important among such services is pollination. Pollination, the transfer of pollen between flowers for the plant reproduction, is being carried out by pollinators, mostly by bees and other hexapod insect species (and to a minor extent by birds as well). Almost the entire pollination in nature happens through these pollinators; pollination using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is currently being tested. Without these pollinators, world’s food production would be collapsed. At present several reports suggest that world’s pollinators are at high risk of extinction from global warming. The value of this pollination service is estimated to be 14.6 billion USD annually worldwide, highlighting the importance.

Supporting services include primary production, nutrient recycling through global biogeochemical cycles, soil formation, habitat refugation and so on. Plant Biodiversity is at the primary trophic level of ecological energy pyramid, and are the sole primary producers at both land and aquatic systems. Therefore, the plant biodiversity is responsible for maintaining the rest of the biodiversity that are dependent upon it (animals, fungi, heterotrophic bacteria and so on). In addition, a minor group of chemoautotrophs live in some of the extreme and mysterious environments of the world, including that at submarine hydrothermal vent systems and subterranean hot springs. These primary producers produce the food that the rest of the trophic levels at these extreme habitats depend upon. Biodiversity is involved at all the major global biogeochemical cycles, including Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorous and so on. For example, free-living nitrogen fixing bacteria and symbiotic nitrogen fixing bacteria that live inside the root nodules of leguminous plants are the crucial players for the sustenance of global nitrogen cycle; without them, the cycle would not have been complete and the equilibrium would soon be lost. Various soil-dwelling organisms including earthworms and various soil bacteria are responsible for the production of soil ecosystem. Detritus decomposers including various species of fungi recycle the waste foliage and produces natural fertilizers at forest ecosystems. Various species of lichens- symbionts between fungi and algae are responsible for weathering of rocks to produce soil-based ecosystems. Lichens are also amongst pioneer species that first colonizes barren lands, the first step of primary succession. Roots of riparian flora traps sediments from its runoff into riverine systems. Habitat refugation is a term to refer providing a safe refugial habitat for a specialist biodiversity. Many unique habitats are being formed by the biodiversity itself; for example, seaweed beds, seagrass meadows, coral reef systems, tropical rain forests and so on. These living habitats usually house a rich biodiversity typically consisting of several endemic species, and therefore the habitat refugation services are key to the proper functioning of such ecosystems. A number of recent research have revealed fascinating facets of such living habitats previously unknown to the humanity. For example, human body is home to 100 trillion natural flora of bacteria that are involved with several key physiological processes, including prevention of diabetes and heart diseases. All macroscopic living beings, including plants and animals have this kind of microflora and are responsible for the health and wellbeing of such organisms.

Natural microflora not only consist of bacteria but also fungi, protozoa and viruses; diversity of which remain mostly unknown. While lichen mycobionts house yeasts and algal symbionts, coral reef-building cnidarians house dinoflagellate algae.

Regulating services are services that regulate major ecosystem processes. This include biological production of oxygen, biological sequestration of CO2, climate regulation, purification of air and water, biological control, bioremediation, disturbance prevention and so on. Perhaps the most obvious service of biodiversity towards humanity and all other living beings is through guaranteeing a steady supply of oxygen. More than 65% of the oxygen produced in the world are by two picoplankton species living in the oceans across the world from Arctic to Antarctic. Oxygen production happens during photosynthesis where in ‘photolysis’ of water molecule in the beginning of electron transport chain results in the breakage of oxygen-hydrogen bond of water molecules, resulting in the production of oxygen. These planktonic blue-green algae of the species Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus also does the majority of natural carbon dioxide sequestration during the photosynthesis, when they absorb (thus, remove) carbon dioxide from the seawater/atmosphere and convert it to food stored within its cells. This process is important, as carbon dioxide is a well-known greenhouse gas and excess CO2 from the atmosphere need to be removed to buffer its concentration. Therefore, biodiversity plays a key role in the regulation of climate. Methanogenic bacteria that lives on normal flora of the intestine of ruminants including cattle produce large amount of methane, an important greenhouse gas. An estimate is that cows produce 250-500 litters of methane per day. Large-scale pastoral fields for raising ruminant livestock, therefore, contributes a large portion of atmospheric methane production. Biodiversity is also investigated for its uses in the mitigation of climate change; especially algae for the Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) emulating the natural carbon capture and sequestration that algae had been doing for billions of years. However, a large-scale metaanalysis of algal photobioreactor-based CCS concluded that this is not an economically viable technological strategy for climate change mitigation.

Global biodiversity is also involved with purification of key natural resources including air and water. Plants, especially forest canopy, is perceived by the general public as a key “filter” for the purification of air, as it remove CO2 and generates O2. As stated earlier, this O2 generation and CO2 assimilation is performed at far higher efficiency and far higher level by oceanic picoplanktons. Much cited ‘clean air’ study by NASA identified a number of plants (such as bamboo palm, cornstalk dracaena, peace lily, snake plant etc.) that can remove toxic volatile substances such as benzene, toluene, xylene, trichloethylene, formaldehyde, ammonia etc. from households if planted indoor environments. Several plant species also have the ability to purify the water resources. Wetland ecosystem is a famous example; where in most of the nutrient load accumulated from agricultural runoff is being assimilated by the plants in the wetlands and is removed before the final discharge into the ocean. However, human mediated habitat destruction of the wetlands has caused this crucial water clean-up step to collapse, and the riverine discharge to start wreaking havoc to the local coastal ecosystem. Wetlands and floodplains also serve its role in disturbance prevention. These natural landscapes serves as a buffer that protects humans from destructive perturbations; for instance flood where in wetlands and floodplains trap and contain the excess storm water. Storm surges and oceanic surf can be buffered to a certain level by natural and/or introduced coastal vegetation. Anthropogenic habitat destruction affecting these buffer zones ultimately removes the natural disturbance prevention protection system, aggravating the damage of natural calamities several fold.

A number of plant species have demonstrated their ability as hyperaccumulators of heavy metals; if planted, they could remove dangerous heavy metals from the contaminated soil. For example, sunflower can accumulate arsenic, willow tree can accumulate cadmium,Indian mustard and poplar trees can accumulate lead, and so on. This process is known as phytoremediation. Apart from direct use of these plants, a number of genetically modified plants containing cloned bacterial genes responsible for hyper accumulation have also been developed. A related process is known as bioaugmentation where in bacterial or microalgal cultures are used to speed-up degradation of the contaminant. For example municipal sewage treatment plants employ trickling filters containing biofilm of microorganisms; these filters use-up the nutrients from the waste water when passed through. A number of natural (such as Alcanivorax and Methylocella silvestris), as well as genetically modified bacteria (such as Pseudomonas putida, engineered by Indian scientist Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty) have been identified/developed that can be used to augment clean-up of oil spillages.

A number of organisms have been identified for its application in biological control, or biocontrol- the control of pests using its natural enemy (predator, parasite, herbivore etc.). For example, cats have been employed by human being since time immemorial to control murine infestation. A number of insect species is being deliberately introduced into agricultural fields to control certain pests; for example, live ladybugs is introduced to control aphids, parasitoid wasps introduced to control greenhouse whitefly, and predatory mite introduced to control the spider mite infestation. In addition, a number of microorganisms can be used to specifically target the pests; for example, entomopathogenic fungi is widely used to control pest aphid, and baculoviruses to control various insect pests. One major advantage of biocontrol is that as no insecticides or pesticides are used, the produces are free from these dangerous synthetic chemicals and therefore healthier. However, many of these introduced species escape the field and have ramification on the biodiversity of neighbourhoods. Another form of biocontrol employs genetically modified organisms containing active biocontrol genes; one famous example is cloning and expression of a gene from bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, “cry” gene, coding for crystal protein (delta-endotoxin) that is specifically toxic to a number of insect species, while harmless for human consumption. A number of genetically modified plants containing cloned cry gene, such as bt-cotton, bt-maize, bt-tobacco and so on. Although a number of potential side effects were proposed such as cry protein being toxic to human beings, toxicity towards natural pollinators like monarch butterfly, genetic mixing of GM and wild plants and so on, most of these allegations were concluded to be hoaxes. More often, biocontrol is part of a broader Integrated Pest Management System (IPMS) where the community ecology is regarded with prime importance. Specifically, IPMS is not targeted for total eradication, but to control, with certain acceptable levels of pests in the field. In addition, IPMS also allows responsible use of pesticides; therefore, it is a combined approach involving various alternative strategies (biocontrol, synthetic pesticides, mechanical control, cultural practices etc.) for the management of pests.

Several studies have revealed that a mixed community involving multi-trophic level ecological niche is far superior and stable comparing with monoculture, the culture/cultivation of just one species, as commonly used in agriculture or aquaculture. This phenomenon is sometimes referred as ‘portfolio effect’; analogy here is a stock portfolio containing a diversified admix of stocks from various sectors and various risk levels have far stable and superior returns than portfolio consisting of just a single stock. The diversified portfolio is more resilient as well (it can recover from sudden market collapse). Similarly, a multi-trophic community is far more stable and resilient (able to recover from natural calamities faster). Modern agricultural practices especially that of the cereal crops, has started a marked shift from crop monoculture to a polyculture or ‘multitrophic’ agriculture. Similarly, instead of culturing a single species of marine animal (for example, a species of fish), modern aquaculture has adopted Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) wherein several species of animals and plants occupying its own unique niche in the mixed community is being adopted. For example, a number of seaweed species are deliberately introduced into shrimp or fish aquaculture systems that can assimilate excess inorganic nutrient, while a number of shellfish species (like abalone) to extract the organic nutrient load such as the fish excrements. As excess nutrients have effectively being used by other trophic levels and sequestered, problems such as eutrophication can be prevented. A number of filter feeders, such as coprophagous organisms (organisms assimilating excreta), decomposers, detritivores (such as fungi) can also be introduced as part of this system. Such a system is more balanced, resilient, stable, and is more economical (as the fisherman can as well harvest abalones and seaweeds in addition to the fish/shrimps).

Finally, the global biodiversity endures human life, experience and fulfilment through a number of its cultural services including tourism, outdoor activities, spirituality, art and aesthetics, and so on. An aesthetically pleasing landscape containing rich biodiversity promotes ecotourism- the tourism directed towards exotic natural environments and its conservation. For example, a number of tourist services are being offered at national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, marine protected areas, wetlands, mangrove forests and so on. There are now specialized tourist operators to cater the tourists looking for nature trail and mountain hiking experiences; these activities are undeniably enriched with a richer biodiversity. Biodiversity also support a number of hobby clubs around the world, for example, birdwatching clubs (Bombay Natural History Society is a famous example from India) and butterfly spotting clubs. Other activities that are indirectly benefited by the biodiversity include gardening, fishkeeping and specimen collecting. Specialized ecotourism operators organize oceanic cruises to some of the biodiversity hotspots, including the famous Galapagos Cruises. A related emerging field is agritourism that is intended to expose the tourists towards first-hand experience in an agricultural or aquacultural field. Incorporation of sustainable cultivation practices such as organic farming, polyculture, IMTA etc., arguably motivates the agritourism industry.

Biodiversity has been inspiring world’s artists, musicians, painters, sculptures, writers and so on for thousands of years. A number of classical ‘pagan’ religions are based on consideration that the nature and its biodiversity as their almighty; examples include Hinduism, Japanese Shintoism, Ancient Egyptian Kemeticism and other hundreds of tribal and indigenous religions. A number of plant and animal species are revered in Hinduism despite its minimum perceived human utility; examples include peacock, tiger, elephants, snake, turtle, the Peepal tree Ficus religiosa, the Ashoka tree Saraca asoca, and the herb Tulsi Ocimum tenuiflorum. These religions have also been instrumental in biodiversity conservation; a famous example is sacred groves of South India (Hindiism) and North East India (Indigenous/tribal belief system). Rich, aesthetically pleasing landscapes have been attracting spiritualists and meditation practitioners for thousands of years for a more fulfilling life experience; for example, saadhu and sanyasi hermits of Hinduism seeking spiritual refuge at the Himalayan valleys that offer an unperturbed natural habitat with rich biota. Biodiversity also have bequest and existential values. Bequest value refers the value as a resource for our future generations. A number of species might not have any apparent uses for the humanity as of today; that does not mean these species are useless to the humanity. The case might simply that its uses are yet to be discovered, and therefore, it serves as a potential resource for our future generation to discover. Existence value refers the value simply for the sake of knowing its existence. For example, most of the humanity have never been to tropical rain forests or coral reefs, yet they are aware of its existence through famous documentaries and books, and they care for its conservation. People are happy just by knowing the existence of these biodiversity, the existential value of it; and they are disturbed if they know that many such habitats are under severe threats from humanity.

  1. Summary

4.1. At present, we know only a very small part of the global biodiversity, yet it is clear that the biodiversity has immense uses and values that has ramifications on every part of human existence.

4.2. Global biodiversity is immensely useful to the humanity as it produces several renewable goods such as food, fodder, forage, drugs, cosmetical products, neutraceuticals, wood, paper, rubber, leather, perfumes and so on.

4.3. World’s non-renewable fossil energy resources are also a product of biodiversity. As the rate of production is extremely slow, petroleum resources of the world are rapidly diminishing

4.4. Apart from tangible goods, biodiversity is also useful to humanity in a number of ways through various services that it offers. Services can arbitrarily be grouped into four as Provisioning services, Regulating services, Supporting services and Cultural services 4.5. Perhaps the most important among services of biodiversity is global biogeochemical cycles as well as production of oxygen combined with natural sequestration of CO2.

Another service with huge economical ramification is pollination.

4.6. A mixed community involving multi-trophic level ecological niche is far superior, resilient and stable comparing with monoculture, the culture/cultivation of just one species, as commonly used in agriculture or aquaculture. Integrated Multi Trophic Aquaculture is an example of such a polyculture system in aquaculture

4.7. Biodiversity also provides several cultural values, such as inspiring artisans, writers, painters, sculptors, musicians and so on. A number of world’s pagan belief systems have in-built biodiversity conservation element; sacred groves of India for example.

 

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