Biodiversity is a contraction of biological and diversity. Everything combined, plants, mushrooms, microorganisms, animals and people, biodiversity covers this great diversity of living beings that interact with one another. It describes the richness of the living world and its complexity. Unfortunately, biodiversity is shrinking from one year to the next. There is an ever greater number of species that are disappearing. The UNO, which sets out to contain this phenomenon, has declared this year, 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. The aim was to inform and increase public awareness. For 2011, it is the international year for forests, which aims to promote the sustainable development and preservation of forests around the world.
There are approximately 1.75 million animal and plant species. Some 10 000 new species, mainly insects, are discovered each year. According to scientists, we are living in the sixth wave of extinction. The erosion of biodiversity is today a reality. Biodiversity is now disappearing at a rate of up to 1 000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Scientists estimate that 25 000 to 50 000 species are disappearing each year. Nature will need at least 10 million years to recover. According to Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Norwegian Prime Minister, “The library of life is burning and we do not even know the titles of the books.”
Through human activity, over-exploitation of living species, through hunting, fishing, trade or logging, has resulted in the disappearance of many animal and plant species. Over the past 500 years, 784 species have disappeared because of man and 60 now only survive in captivity. Thus, one out of every three amphibians, one out of every eight birds and one out of every four mammals are threatened with extinction. And the disappearance of a species is definitive.
In France, the destruction of natural environments has become the greatest threat to the biodiversity. For example, in 2000, the last female ibex of the Pyrenees died, thereby marking the definitive disappearance of this sub-species, which was a major element in French natural heritage. France ranks 8th in the world and 4th in Europe for the number of threatened species. There are thus a little more than one hundred threatened species on mainland France.
Let us not forget that natural ecosystems also lie at the origin of numerous medicines that save lives and are used as wells for our waste, particularly carbon dioxide. 75% of the world’s population still depends on remedies prepared from plants. As a heritage for future generations, protecting biodiversity has become a major challenge.
