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Essay On Value Of Biodiversity

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What is biodiversity? Some may say it is just merely a number of species within an ecosystem. However this is not the case, as majority aspects of our lives solely depend on biodiversity. Water, food and air are produced directly by different species and the quality of these resources depend on other species activities. According to the convention of biological diversity "Biological diversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”
The important question however, is can we put a value on biodiversity? The total value in many ways is infinite. Earth’s economies “would grind to a halt, without the services of ecological life-support systems” (Costanza et al 97). According to Freeman. (1998) to understand the true value of something, one must first define what that thing is and what the world would possibly be like without that particular entity. The following essay will review the methods available to assign value to biodiversity. This will be done in terms of its ecosystem services, …show more content…
Ecosystem services covers a range of values as it acts as an umbrella regarding general values of biodiversity. Functional values ties in neatly with ecosystem services as they both consider the value and function a species carries out in an ecosystem. The economic values of biodiversity can be given a monetary value as this can be easily calculated. However, social value is considerably harder to quantify. Everyone has different ethics, morals and priorities, socially value things differently. So how can we really value biodiversity? Research on biodiversity and its value has been undertaken for the past few decades and will continue as long as people’s priorities and responsibilities

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