The story of a sea otter (Enhydra lutris) threatened by extinction is a legend in the marine ecology dicipline. Owing to the fact that the sea otter is one of the key species in the Pacific Ocean ecosystem, North America, many scientists have paid it a lot of attention. it. When sea otters are threatened due to the intensive hunting of their fur, the kelp forest (macro-algae) also decline in terms of their population. Why did such a thing happen? Is it merely a coincidence?

Without a shadow of doubt, it is not a coincidence. If we take a look at the food web in the North Pacific Ocean, we would know that sea otters are predators of sea urchin (class Echinoidea), while the latter is a predator of kelp forest. Correspondingly, when the population of sea otters declined, the sea urchin population increased, thus it required a lot of kelp forest. This creates an 'unbalanced condition' resulting in a substantial decline in the kelp forest population.

Meantime, we know that the decline in the kelp forest population will affect the coastal and marine environment. Through scientific reports we are informed that the presence of kelp forest helps to control waves and currents. The extinction of kelp forest causes more extensive coastal erosion, which equates to a big problem for the broader coastal ecosystem. In the nomenclature of ecology, the function of kelp forest in protecting the coastal area is called ecosystem services. In other words, ecosystem services are the benefits that people obtain from the ecosystem.

The above mentioned classical story was briefly alluded to by Professor Michel Loreau during the Biodiversity Symposium: Basic or Luxury Item Commodity?, which was held on November 4, 2010 at the Zeger Van Hee Auditorium, College De Valk, Tiensestraat 41. Professor Loreau is a Full Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Ecology at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is one of the top ten ecologists in the world today. Other speakers at the symposium organised by a cooperation between the Leuven Sustainable Earth Research Centre, Department of Biology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, and Metaforum Leuven, were Nick Hanley from The University of Stirling, UK, and Mauricio Bellon from Bioversity International.

Biodiveristy?

So what is biodiversity? UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 defines biodiversity as 'the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.' Such a definition is also used by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Why, then, is it important to pay attention to biodiversity? One particular reason is the services that biodiversity contributes, either directly or indirectly, to the environment.

According to research conducted by experts, and as reported in a position paper issued by Metaforum Leuven, it is known that there is a lot of concrete evidence of how biodiversity provides many types of ecosystem services. Pollination, for instance, provides ecosystem services in both a direct and indirect way. The direct value for humans of pollination includes the increase in crop production and animal feed in agriculture. The indirect value is the increase in the reproduction of wild animals that take a role in other ecosystem services such as erosion control, ecosystem stability, and carbon storage. In the USA, the direct value of pollination services provided by honeybees is estimated at between 12.3 to 16.3 billion USD. A bigger number is estimated for Native North-American pollinators (excluding honeybees) which generate direct impacts through ecosystem services, amounting to 3.1 billion USD on the fruits and vegetables sector produced in the USA. Thus, one can conclude that the threat to biodiversity is also a threat to humans and and the environment.

The novel importance of biodiversity requires us to pay it more attention, not only the scientist community, but the whole of society as well. Because there are many more challenges ahead. In the field of agriculture, according to Mauricio Bellon's presentation, one of these is to diversify food, so farmers are also playing a role in conserving biodiversity, instead of planting a single crop in their fields. From an ecological economic point of view, such as delivered by Professor Hanley one of the important issues is to increase the contribution of private lands to biodiversity. It is also important to convince policy makers about biodiversity's notability. Because, to quote Professor Loreau, "science is not the only thing that will solve all problems," so, we need cooperation among various stakeholders.

However, this symposium lets an on-going and central issue slip away without a deep elaboration, which is the large scale and unsustainable extraction of natural resources in many places, mainly in developing countries. These large-scale extractive industries, like mining, timber, and over exploitation by hunting, fishing and groundwater pumping, are the real threat for biodiversity, because mismanagement in these fields –and this is common—can destroy ecosystems in a short period of time.There is, of course, no easy solution to this problem. |