Why is Biodiversity Important?

Biodiversity is important for so many reasons. It fundamentally relates to ecosystem function. There's a very strong relationship between levels of biodiversity and ecosystem function. So more biodiversity, up to a point, means you generally have higher degrees of ecosystem function, which are hugely important for humans, but also for all life and all these systems that It's also really important for stability within those systems. So increases in biodiversity lead to increased stability. It can act as insurance in a way where you have the functions of a system that we want to maintain through changing conditions. And by having diversity, if the conditions change a little or even a lot, there's a better chance that sort of the key functions of that system will remain operational as a different species or a different set of genes or a different component of that ecosystem or a different ecosystem altogether can fulfill some of the needs or some of the function required. Of course, there's also cultural and relational importance of biodiversity for us as humans. We have a deep emotional and spiritual and any number of ways of explaining our sort of human connections to these different components of life that we share this planet with.