No diversity, no future
Without biodiversity, the lives of human beings become far more precarious. Poor rural households in the developing world are most at risk, because they are more likely to depend on what they grow and find in the wild. It is normally the women who produce the family' s food (either cultivating or collecting) and fetch water and fuel. Less diversity means that they now have to travel further afield to find the supplies their families need. It is not unusual for women in some parts of Africa to work an 18 - hour day.
Loss of biodiversity causes or contributes to the disruption of community life, forcing people to migrate to cities and other countries - a combination of deforestation and population growth has recently driven more than a million Javanese from their homes - and can sometimes lead to armed conflict.
People will suffer everywhere if we continue to destroy medicinal species. It is often only when a new problem emerges that we register the importance of biodiversity: before the AIDS epidemic we had no idea that Australia' s Moreton Bay chestnut would yield a chemical which may help advance the research for a cure. Hundreds of other species with healing potential are threatened, and could vanish before we realize how much we need them.
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