Biodiversity and Climate Change

Biodiversity is continually transferred by a changing climate. Conditions change across the face of the planet, sometimes slowly, sometimes in larger increments leading to rearrangements of biological associations. Now, a new type of climate change brought about by human activities is being added to this natural variability, threatening to accelerate the loss of biodiversity already underway due to other human stressors. The carbon cycle and the water cycle, arguably the two most important large-scale processes for life on earth, both depend on biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystem levels and can yield feedbacks to climate change. Maintaining and restoring healthy ecosystems plays a key role in adapting to and mitigating climate change through biodiversity conservation, sustainable use and sustainable land management and yields multiple environmental, economic and social benefits.