Why should we conserve biodiversity ? How can we do it ? [5]

The reasons for conserving biodiversity can be grouped into 3 categories:

1. The narrowly utilitarian argument says that humans derive many economic benefits from nature such as food, firewood, construction material, industrial products, medicines, etc. This can be done by ‘bioprospecting’ (exploring molecular, genetic and species-level diversity for products of economic importance).
2. The broadly utilitarian argument says that biodiversity plays a major role in many ecosystem services that nature provides. e.g : The Amazon forest produces 20% of the total oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere.
3. The ethical argument says that we owe it to the millions of species with whom we share this planet to conserve biodiversity. [3]

Biodiversity can be conserved by two methods:

1. In-situ consrvation: The conservation of the whole ecosystem in its natural habitat is called in-situ conservation. e.g: biodiversity hotspots, sacred grooves, biosphere reserves,etc.
2. Ex-situ conservation: The conservation of threatened animals and plants in a specially created environment outside of their natural habitat is called ex-situ conservation. e.g: zoological parks, botanical gardens, etc. [2]