The Biodiversity Crisis: The Sixth Mass Extinction, Ecosystem Service Values, and Biodiversity Conservation Frameworks
Primary drivers of biodiversity loss (IPBES assessment): habitat destruction and land use change (primary driver, mainly from agricultural expansion); overexploitation and hunting; invasive alien species; pollution; climate change (rapidly becoming an increasingly important independent driver). Approximately 1 million species face extinction threat, including ~40% of amphibians, 33% of coral reefs, ~10% of insects.
Ecosystem Services: Nature’s Economic Value
Biodiversity and ecosystems support human economies through “ecosystem services”: Provisioning (food, freshwater, timber, pharmaceutical raw materials); Regulating (climate regulation, flood control, pollination — ~75% of global crops depend on animal pollination, estimated economic value over $235 billion annually); Cultural (tourism, spiritual value).
The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity (UK government commissioned, 2021) is the most important biodiversity economic assessment. Core conclusion: the global economy’s dependence on nature is severely underestimated; treating nature as a “free” production input is fundamentally unsustainable. The “Natural Capital” framework — incorporating natural ecosystem economic value into national accounts and corporate financial reporting — is one of the mainstream policy directions for addressing the biodiversity crisis.
