What Is Biodiversity, Why Do We Care, and What Is the Importance of Regional, State, Local, and Private Policies and Programs?

• Author: Thomas E. Lovejoy
• Pages: 19-23

Chapter 2

What Is Biodiversity, Why Do We

Care, and What Is the Importance of

Regional, State, Local, and Private

Policies and Programs?

by Thomas E. Lovejoy

Biological diversity as a term is but 24 years old, and its contraction,

biodiversity, is younger still. Nonetheless, this collective term for the

variety of all living things, including plants, animals, and microorganisms,

has assumed global significance. The importance of biological diversity,the

concern that human activities may be irreversibly depleting the world’s

biodiversity, and the corresponding need to conserve that biodiversity while

caring for the humans living in natural systems gained recognition from all

nations of the world in negotiating and signing the 1992 Convention on Bio-

logical Diversity at the Rio Earth Summit.1

The term biodiversity encompasses all living things, which all play im-

portant biological roles. When one looks at the Tree of Life, one sees a low

spreading bush with three small terminal twigs for plants, fungi, and animals

(including human beings). The vast majority of the tree is an array of micro-

organisms with strange metabolisms, some dating to the early history of life

on earth, and are as important to human society as the more familiar animals

and plants.

All too frequently,particularly in political discourse regarding the federal

Endangered Species Act,2people focus on the importance of a single species

rather than focusing on the larger biological picture, and literally miss the

19

1. Convention on Biological Diversity of the United Nations Conference on the

Environment and Development, opened for signature June 5, 1992, U.N.

Doc. DPI/1307, reprinted in 31 I.L.M. 818 (1992), available at http://www.

biodiv.org/convention/articles.asp (last visited May 25, 2005). For discussion

of the Convention, see infra Chapters 3 and 4.

2. 16 U.S.C. §§1531-1544, ELR Stat. ESA §§2-18.