Biodiversity loss | EPFL Graph Search

Biodiversity loss includes the worldwide extinction of different species, as well as the local reduction or loss of species in a certain habitat, resulting in a loss of biological diversity. The latter phenomenon can be temporary or permanent, depending on whether the environmental degradation that leads to the loss is reversible through ecological restoration/ecological resilience or effectively permanent (e.g. through land loss). The current global extinction (frequently called the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction), has resulted in a biodiversity crisis being driven by human activities which push beyond the planetary boundaries and so far has proven irreversible. The main direct threats to conservation (and thus causes for biodiversity loss) fall in eleven categories: Residential and commercial development; farming activities; energy production and mining; transportation and service corridors; biological resource usages; human intrusions and activities that alter, destroy, disturb habitats and species from exhibiting natural behaviors; natural system modification; invasive and problematic species, pathogens and genes; pollution; catastrophic geological events, climate change. Numerous scientists and the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services assert that human population growth and overconsumption are the primary factors in this decline. However other scientists have criticized this, saying that loss of habitat is caused mainly by "the growth of commodities for export" and that population has very little to do with overall consumption, due to country wealth disparities. Global warming is a major threat to global biodiversity. For example, coral reefs – which are biodiversity hotspots – will be lost within the century if global warming continues at the current rate. Some studies have however pointed out that habitat destruction for the expansion of agriculture and the overexploitation of wildlife are the more significant drivers of contemporary biodiversity loss, not climate change.