7/23/2019 Major Threats and Challenges to Biodiversity Conservation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/major-threats-and-challenges-to-biodiversity-conservation 1/2

Major threats and challenges to biodiversity conservation

Three major threats are posed to biodiversity:

•  Habitat alteration, usually from higher-diverse natural ecosystems to less

diverse (‘monoculture’  in the extreme case). This is perhaps the most important

threat to biodiversity and, by extension, system productivity. Two important cases

in Kenya concern conversion of forests to cultivation (prevalent in all major

forests); and conversion of rangeland to cropland  –  which is often later abandoned.

•  Over-harvesting, that is, an extraction rate that is higher than the regeneration rate,

leading to eventual exhaustion of the resource. Again, over-harvesting of trees and

grasses are particularly relevant issues in Kenya.

•  Climatic change, often related to changing regional-level vegetation patterns, and

involving features such as carbon dioxide build-up (global warming) and the El

 Nino and La Nina phenomena (climate regime reversal).

The importance of natural resource conservation cannot be denied, given that ecosystem

 processes and services provide the foundation for our current existence, and that future

consumption depends, to a great extent, on stock of natural ‘capital’. Seen in this light,

conservation is a precondition for sustainable development.

A number of broad challenges exist, however:

•  Challenge 1: The fundamental problem is that more people earn greater

immediate benefits from exploiting biological resources than they do from conserving

them.

•  Challenge 2: Areas of the world with the greatest levels of biodiversity are often

those with fewest economic means to implement conservation. One of the

greatest challenges is to reconcile this situation.

7/23/2019 Major Threats and Challenges to Biodiversity Conservation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/major-threats-and-challenges-to-biodiversity-conservation 2/2

•  Challenge 3: Whilst over-harvesting and/or depletion of a renewable resource may

 be a conscious choice, perhaps the greatest need is for resource harvesting to be

conducted under efficient management, rather than mismanagement, in order that

society can realise the greatest possible gains.