A Vital Interlinkage

Biodiversity, the intricate web of life sustaining Earth, now stands imperiled by climate change, but its conservation and restoration, resulting in sustainable living, can reverse the course of the crisis as well;

Update: 2025-08-23 21:41 GMT

Biodiversity is simply the variety of all life forms on earth: from the smallest bacteria to complex ecosystems such as coral reefs and forests. Human and animal life, as we know it, depends on preserving this biodiversity, which itself has evolved over billions of years. Biodiversity is also inextricably linked with climate change: in fact, climate change has adversely affected biodiversity. Some scientists believe that extinction and threat to various species and decline in their local population in the past 500 years “may be comparable in both rate and magnitude with the five previous mass extinctions”. (quoted from Separated at Birth? Addressing the Twin Crises of Biodiversity and Climate Change by Daniel A Farber, published in the Ecological Law Quarterly, 2016). Let us discuss these issues in more detail below.

Effect of Climate Change on Biodiversity

The UN has documented that climate change has adversely affected terrestrial ecosystems (such as land and forests), marine and coastal ecosystems (the seas, oceans and coasts) and freshwater ecosystems (rivers, lakes, the poles, and glaciers). On land, the increased invasion of the forests to convert them into agricultural lands for increased food production has led to the extinction of many animal and plant species. Similarly, the marine and coastal ecosystems have come under threat, with coral reefs and mangroves being lost at an increasing pace because of rising ocean temperatures and increased ocean acidification. The freshwater ecosystems are similarly threatened because of increased soil erosion and flooding of rivers. Daniel Farber, in the aforementioned article, speaks of the different facets of global commons such as the atmosphere, oceans, forests and polar regions and other ecosystems, all being linked to the global economy. To extend this analogy further, it is the unsustainable growth in the global economy, reliant on fossil fuels that is impacting all the other ecosystems.

In various articles authored by this author, the deleterious effects of climate change have been repeated a number of times: the increasing heat, extreme weather events such as storms and cyclones, increased water carrying capacity of such storms and the havoc caused by them, the rampaging forest fires, the threat to the oceans and the marine coastal systems, rising pollution because of the massive quantity of fossil fuels being burnt etc. All these effects of climate change have a direct impact and bearing on biodiversity. Many organizations such as the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) measure the loss of biodiversity through various indices and lists. The Living Planet Index has been developed by the WWF in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, and is based on the population trends of various species. The STAR (Species Threat Abatement and Restoration) metric has been developed by IUCN based on data on extinction risks and threats faced by various species based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has also highlighted the link between Climate Change and Biodiversity as a two-way street. All efforts at conservation and restoration of ecosystems would have a salutary effect on Adaptation efforts in Climate change. To quote from its website: Ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation, which integrate the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services into an overall adaptation strategy, can be cost-effective and generate social, economic and cultural co-benefits and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity.

Given that climate change and biodiversity are interdependent, further loss in biodiversity has to be prevented at all costs. The various ways to do so in terrestrial, ocean and freshwater ecosystems has been discussed in various articles on mitigation and adaptation in this series: we have to change the way in which we grow our food, undertake fishing in the oceans and rivers, manage our forests, produce our steel and cement, manage our waste, drive around and build our cities. Further, preservation and restoration of biodiversity is a nature-based solution of absorbing more carbon, through greater afforestation, mangrove protection and coral reef preservation.

Conclusion

It is well-known that it is a two-way street — climate change and biodiversity. Climate change continues to have an adverse impact on biodiversity, and this has been noticed in the steady loss of species. This pace has only increased in the past few decades and must be stopped. All the climate mitigation and adaptation measures discussed in previous articles will prevent further loss of biodiversity. The conservation and restoration of biodiversity will also have a salutary effect on efforts to lower greenhouse gases.

The writer is Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Cooperation, Government of West Bengal

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