This week the UN’s Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warned that a million species face extinction thanks to human activity. The word “biodiversity” is one of the most successful political coinages of modern times.
No one talked about “biodiversity” (for “biological diversity”) until it began vanishing. It first appeared in a 1985 research paper by Laura Tangley; the following year a national forum on biodiversity took place in Washington DC. According to ecologist Daniel Janzen, this event was “designed to make Congress aware of this complexity of species that we’re losing”, and the word biodiversity “was punched into that system … deliberately”.
But is biodiversity a good in itself? By eradicating the smallpox virus, we reduced it. Really, we’re encouraged to revere “biodiversity” instrumentally: for what it can do for us. (We might find new drugs in the Amazon rainforest.) Similarly, to say “ecosystem services” for things we depend on – such as pollination – implies that ecosystems are just there to help humans. (Thanks, Nature!) But perhaps such language, reasserting our place at the top of the pyramid of life, is the only way to persuade policymakers.
