Biodiversity and food security
by Michael Watson (comments: 0
There are many reasons why we should promote biodiversity and protect nature. Nature has always inspired artists when they paint pictures, compose songs or write poems. Nature serves as a retreat when we are stressed by everyday life. And nature serves as inspiration for scientists when they research new technologies and medicines to improve our lives on this planet.
Apart from these non-plastic resources, nature performs many other vital tasks for our planet: The so-called ecosystem services.
Healthy and biodiverse nature purifies the air, stores water and ensures a stable climate. Ecosystem services also play an important role in food production. This is becoming increasingly relevant as the world's population is growing so rapidly and more and more people need to be supplied with food.
We were able to give a presentation on this topic at the open meeting of the IHK networks Social Responsibility and Hospitality at the Federal Garden Show in Mannheim. You can read the transcript of the presentation below.
What is biodiversity?
Before we turn our attention to the practical aspects, we first need to chew over some theory, as the term “biodiversity” is not entirely uncontroversial in science. The most common definition of the term “biodiversity” was coined in 1992 by the Convention on Biological Diversity:
“Biodiversity 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 and between species and diversity of ecosystems”
Admittedly: Elegant is different. Even biodiversity enthusiasts have to admit that this definition is clunky, if not daunting. Yet it would actually not be that difficult to make the term understandable for laypeople.
Biodiversity is a new German term for “variety of species”. In other words: the diversity between species. Biodiversity therefore initially describes the diversity between animal species, such as between dogs and cats. However, biodiversity goes even further and also subsumes the diversity within a species. For example, there are capercaillies, blackbirds and eagles. Biodiversity therefore means not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species.
Biodiversity also means the diversity of entire ecosystems. For example, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is just as much a part of biodiversity as the Sahara, where plants and animal species have to cope with less than 45 mm of rainfall per year. And, of course, the great biodiversity hotspots such as the rainforests in the Amazon or the Congo Basin are just as much a part of biodiversity as the Odenwald or the Palatinate Forest.
In short, biodiversity describes all biotic life on earth. From the large mammals, such as the elephants in the African savannah, to the brook trout that lives in the mountain streams of the Alpine foothills. From kingfishers to city pigeons; from poppies to redwoods; from honeybees to tarantulas; and from bacteria to viruses: biodiversity encompasses everything that lives on this planet in some form or another.
It is all the more frightening when we look at the latest figures from biodiversity research: In the last 50 years, around 68 percent of all wild animal species in the world have become extinct. This development is known as the “biodiversity crisis”, as it marks an unprecedented mass extinction in the history of the earth.

“Stop!”, some people who are familiar with the history of the earth or have seen Jurassic Park may now exclaim. “There have been mass extinctions on this planet before!” And you're absolutely right!
Mass extinctions of biotic life are nothing new in the history of the earth. There have already been five near-extinctions of life on Earth:

Vor etwa 445 Millionen Jahren – im End-Ordovizium – sind etwa 85 Prozent aller Lebewesen ausgestorben, weil es durch Plattentektonische Bewegungen zu einer Eiszeit kam und der Meeresspiegel dadurch drastisch sank.
Dann, vor ungefähr 370 Millionen Jahren, kam es zum zweiten großen Massensterben der Erdgeschichte. Bis heute weiß man nicht so hundertprozentig genau, wieso dreiviertel aller Lebewesen ausgestorben sind, aber Forschende vermuten, dass es wahrscheinlich mit einem Vulkanausbruch, einem Meteoriteneinschlag oder einer erdnahen Supernova zu tun hatte.
Das dritte große Massensterben fand vor etwa 250 Millionen Jahren statt, als knapp 90 Prozent aller Lebewesen durch die Folgen eines Vulkanausbruchs ausgestorben sind. Meerestiere, Landtiere und sogar Insekten verschwanden fast vollständig von der Erdoberfläche, da ein Vulkan in Sibirien mehrere hunderttausend Jahre Lava spuckte.
50 Millionen Jahre später kam es schon wieder zu einem massiven Vulkanausbruch, an dessen Folgen etwa 75 Prozent aller Lebewesen krepierten.
Und – almost last but not least – das Massensterben vor 66 Millionen Jahren, als rund 60 Prozent aller Lebewesen ausstarben, als ein Asteroid mit ca. 15 Kilometern Durchmesser auf die Erde prallte – also etwa die Distanz zwischen Mannheim und Heidelberg.
Wir sind uns einig: Massensterben sind nichts Neues in der Erdgeschichte. Doch im Gegensatz zu den historischen Massensterben gibt es bei der heutigen Biodiversitätskrise einige Besonderheiten. So betrifft das heutige Massensterben nicht alle Lebewesen auf unserem Planeten – denn die reine Biomasse an Tieren ist heute so hoch wie nie. Das mag im ersten Moment gut klingen. Dringt man etwas tiefer in die Materie ein, sieht man allerdings schnell, dass diese Kennzahl durch die Lebensweise des Homo sapiens verfälscht wird.
Denn die heutige Biomasse der Subgruppe von Säugetieren besteht zu 34 Prozent aus uns Menschen und zu 62 Prozent aus Nutztieren, wie Rindern, Schweinen und Schafen. Das bedeutet, dass nur 4 Prozent aller Säugetiere auf diesem Planeten in freier Wildbahn leben. Sage und schreibe 68 Prozent aller wild lebenden Säugetiere, Vögel, Fische, Amphibien und Reptilien sind seit 1970 ausgestorben. Bei Insekten ist die Lage noch dramatischer: Hier sind – allein in Deutschland – 75 Prozent der Insekten seit 1989 ausgestorben.
Und kommen wir nun zum Elefanten im Raum: Im Gegensatz zu den vergangenen Massensterben lässt sich mit hoher Sicherheit sagen, dass die heutige Biodiversitätskrise auf den Menschen zurückzuführen ist. Wir können keinen Vulkanausbruch, keine Plattentektonische Bewegung und keinen Asteroideneinschlag für die heutige Lage verantwortlich machen – sondern müssen uns an die eigene Nase fassen und Verantwortung übernehmen. Aber die gute Nachricht lautet: Es ist noch nicht zu spät. Wir stehen noch am Anfang des Massensterbens und es gibt noch Hoffnung, dass wir das Ruder herumreißen.
Reasons for today's biodiversity crisis
In order to meet this challenge, we must first differentiate the exact causes of the biodiversity crisis. The scientific consensus is that today's mass extinction can be attributed to three major factors: Habitat destruction, the introduction of invasive species and pollution.
The destruction of habitats has many faces: from the deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil to the restoration of the Rhine dam in Mannheim. All over the world, existing ecosystems are being destroyed to create agricultural land or expand infrastructure. Clever approaches are needed here that are compatible with economic, environmental and social policy.
Secondly, the introduction of invasive species is a massive driver of the biodiversity crisis, such as nutria, which were imported to Germany around 100 years ago for fur production.

Auch wenn das Exemplar auf dem Foto ganz niedlich aussieht, belasten Nutrias heimische Ökosysteme, indem sie Dämme von heimischen Bibern zerstören und anderen Tieren die Nahrung wegschnappen.
Drittens spielt natürlich auch die Verschmutzung der Umwelt eine große Rolle in der Biodiversitätskrise. Die Vermüllung der Meere, die Belastung von Böden durch Pestizide und Düngemittel und auch das steigende CO₂ Niveau in der Atmosphäre machen unseren Planeten lebensfeindlicher und beschleunigen somit die Biodiversitätskrise. Klimakrise und Biodiversitätskrise sind nämlich keine gesonderten Phänomene und müssen daher holistisch angegangen werden.
What role does biodiversity play in food production?
Since the beginning of time, man has been dependent on a healthy and diverse natural environment. Nature serves as a source of aesthetic and spiritual inspiration and is of course also a recreational retreat. Furthermore, man draws inspiration from nature to create innovations. Here we should think of all the medicines or technical achievements whose principle was first discovered in nature. And, of course, nature provides us with resources such as wood, fish and other foodstuffs, without which we would not be able to maintain our current standard of living.
Apart from these sentimental and plastic resources, a healthy nature provides us with so-called ecosystem services. These often take place in the background, so that we take them for granted. However, if these ecosystem services suddenly stop functioning as they should, this quickly becomes noticeable. And with the loss of species, these ecosystem services become increasingly unstable as their foundations begin to crumble.
- Healthy ecosystems ensure that the soil stores more water and floods are mitigated.
- Healthy ecosystems ensure that we have clean air to breathe.
- Healthy ecosystems ensure that our climate remains stable and that we can maintain our current lifestyle.
- Healthy ecosystems ensure that biomass is produced, nutrients are recycled and plants are pollinated so that we can produce enough food for the world's ever-growing population.
In essence, all our lives depend on functioning ecosystem services, which in turn are based on a healthy and species-rich natural environment.
Ecosystem services and the apple tree
Even our humble apple tree in the orchard requires a multitude of interlinked ecosystem services before it can provide us with a tasty apple.
For the core of an apple to germinate, it needs healthy soil with a certain concentration of nutrients. Bacteria ensure that enough - but not too much - nitrogen is bound in the soil, while worms and other insects loosen up the soil so that the delicate roots of the seedling can take hold.

After a few years, when a seedling has grown into a tree, our bees, bumblebees and butterflies pollinate the apple tree's flowers. Without this pollination service provided by insects, we humans would have to laboriously pollinate the apple tree's blossoms.

Biodiversity also plays a role in the reproduction of the apple tree, when birds and other vertebrates excrete the apple seeds they have eaten in other places.
And the apples that are not eaten by us or other animals end up in the orchard meadow, where they are decomposed by fungi and add important nutrients to the soil so that the apple tree bears fruit again the following year.
Even this simple example shows the perfect cycle of nature, which is kept going by ecosystem services. If one or even several ecosystem services fail, we humans would have to take over these tasks. This would entail such horrendous costs that it would be practically impossible. The loss of ecosystem services can therefore often be considered irreversible.
Food security and ecosystem service
In the context of food security, it is not only fruit and vegetable production that is dependent on functioning ecosystem services. According to WWF estimates, around 3 billion people worldwide depend on food from fisheries.
Thanks to the ecosystem services in intact mangrove forests, the water is filtered so that fish populations are larger here. And healthy coral reefs - or even bare seagrass beds - are needed by many fish species as spawning grounds.
Back on land, it is not only fruit and vegetable plants that depend on a high level of biodiversity. Studies have shown that cereals with a high level of genetic diversity are more resilient to pests, diseases and climate change.
Nature still holds many secrets in the genetic codes of legumes, cereals, insects, bacteria and fungi. These undiscovered genetic resources have the potential to make food production more efficient, more resilient and higher yielding - they just need to be discovered. It is therefore all the more terrifying for all future bio-entrepreneurs that this untapped pool of genetic innovation is shrinking so quickly. For millions of years, these secrets of nature have been optimized through evolution - we should be grateful for this groundwork instead of treating it so carelessly.

To summarize briefly: you can imagine biodiversity like the net of a dreamcatcher: Each node represents an animal or plant species. The more nodes a network has, the more stable the entire ecosystem is. If we cut many nodes in a network, it loses its functionality and more and more things fall through until it finally collapses.
- Biodiversity is therefore, firstly, the basis for the continued existence of ecosystems.
- Secondly, biodiversity is the basis for the functioning of ecosystem services.
- Thirdly, biodiversity is the basis for sustainable resource management.
- And fourthly, biodiversity is the basis for the natural evolution of organisms that adapt to climatic changes without any human intervention.
How can we protect and promote biodiversity

Admittedly, the figures seem pretty overwhelming: 68 percent loss of mammal biodiversity; 75 percent loss of insects - the biggest mass extinction since Jurassic Park.
But there is reason for hope: biodiversity-promoting measures have already been shown to help and mitigate the decline. Finally, I would like to present some of these measures so that you too can take action to promote biodiversity here and around the world. And the good news is that the formula for saving the world is relatively simple.
The first variable in this formula is: we must protect existing habitats. Whether this is the Rhine dam in Mannheim or the Amazon in Brazil, healthy ecosystems with a high level of biodiversity must be protected. Conversely, of course, this means that there is even less space for housing, industry or commerce. We therefore need clever solutions for adding storeys to existing buildings or embedding new buildings in ecosystems without destroying them completely.

Die zweite Variable in unserer Welt-Rettungs-Formel ist: Neuen Lebensraum zu schaffen. Damit sind natürlich die traditionellen Naturschutzgebiete gemeint, die ein Refugium für die Tierwelt sind.
But habitats can also be created in "working areas". For example, by greening roadside verges or introducing flower strips in agricultural areas. This may sound a little anticlimactic at first, but recent studies show that wild bee populations recover where farmers have planted flower strips.
This not only fills the hearts of conservationists, but also pleases the farmer, who now benefits from natural pest control and whose crops are better pollinated. However, in order to create new habitats in agricultural areas, the use of pesticides and fertilizers must be reduced in order to protect living organisms in the air, soil and groundwater.

Implementing the last variable in our world rescue formula is perhaps the most complex task. In order for the measures just mentioned to be implemented, broad support is needed in politics, society and business.
At Bee friendly, we believe that this change in social values will not come about through lecturing, bans or sticking it to the streets. We are advocates of optimistic nature conservation, which we want to integrate into the everyday lives of citizens. By planting wildflower meadows or making bee hotels in kindergartens, the first points of contact with nature and biodiversity can be created.
The so-called "CleanUps" with the Surfrider Foundation raise awareness of waste problems without lecturing people with a raised finger. And by setting up wild bee nesting boxes in prominent locations, issues such as insect mortality are brought to the public eye. This integrates nature conservation into everyday life and, with a bit of luck, brings about a change in values in society.
So it is actually quite simple to preserve biodiversity and thus maintain the ecosystem services that guarantee our food security. But if we want to protect existing habitats and create new ones, the associated costs must be accepted and borne by society. This will only be possible if there is a change in social values towards more nature conservation. Instead of bans and lectures, we at Bee friendly stand for optimistic nature conservation. Nature conservation must be fun!