Biodeversity
Posted: Wednesday, December 09, 2009
by Rose-Marie Chaperon
Chaperon Consulting, LLC
Biodiversity is essential for the benefits of the ecosystems, it can provide to humans and hence or human well-being. While many people have benefited over the last century from the conversion of natural ecosystems to human-dominated ecosystems, other people have suffered from the consequences of biodiversity losses (Green facts, 2007) . Biodiversity goes beyond the provisioning for material welfare and livelihoods to include security, resiliency, social relations, health, and freedoms and choices.
The world is experiencing an increase in human suffering and economic losses from natural disasters over the past several decades. Over the past four decades, the number disasters have increased by a factor of four, while economic losses have increased by a factor of ten. During the 1990s, countries low on the Human Development Index experienced about 20% of the hazard events and reported over 50% of the deaths and just 5% of economic losses. Common finding from the various sub-global assessments was that many people living in rural areas cherish and promote ecosystem variability and diversity as a risk management strategy against shocks and surprises (Green facts, 2007) .
Wealth may be described as an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches, maybe yet, the state of being rich. Yet about 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations (Brenn, 2009). This is one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often. Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone (Green facts, 2007) . The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish them. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families (Davis, 2008) .
In my opinion, the money we could be using to preserve and pay the expense cost of preserving and restoring biodiversity, we could be using that money to take care of the poor. With that being said, I am well aware that America is a capitalist country, would communism work in America? Maybe not! If human nature is basically egoistic, then communism doesn't work. If people are basically selfish, then they won't work for the common good, and there will be a tendency to freeload or otherwise take advantage of the system. For communism to work in that case, you would you need to make sure that everybody was doing their fair share. You would need a system of "points", to make sure everybody is doing their part. People then work to earn points, so that they can justify receiving their share -- or else they don't get their share, or they go to jail, or they're kicked out of the community, or some other fascist reaction. Therefore, if I were given a choice to rebuild, repaid some forest or feeding a starving population, I would choose to feed the population.
REFERENCES
Davis, L. (2008, 09 11). Distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. Poverty vs Wealth , pp. 7,8.
Green facts. (2007). Biodiversity and Human Well-being. Why is biodiversity loss a concern , 11.
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