Wildlife, biodiversity and climate
A habitable climate depends on wildlife and biodiversity, because:
- Climate is a consequence of biodiversity and biodiversity is everything that ecosystems represent to life on Earth;
- A stable climate and therefore, a habitable Earth, depends on stabilising ecosystems; and
- Animals are the only mechanism that can do that.
As wildlife declines, we are breaking down biodiversity structure and losing energy (in the form of carbon) out of food chains and into the atmosphere and ocean. This way, climate and our food security are inextricably linked. We’re not only stripping soils of the material needed to feed us, we’re also introducing chaotic free energy into our atmosphere and causing huge fluctuations in the weather. The latter makes it harder for us to know when, where and how to feed ourselves.
Climate change: fossil fuels v. wildlife
Climate change has always been the symptom of biodiversity loss … that’s to say, the breakdown of the complex connectivity between lifeforms that allows Earth to flex in response to changing conditions.
Only recently have we created artificial climate change by mining carbon buried deep underground by animals millions of years ago. The animals that did that are no longer around and today’s animals, that would be busy moderating modern-day carbon, have populations that are heavily depleted.
We cannot engineer our way out of this crisis. We can only rebuild ecosystems rich in a diversity of animal life.
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
A recent paper published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution sets out the increasing evidence that loss of large vertebrates in particular, is having massive impacts on ecosystem processes.
The article stops short of explaining why (which is the subject of this blog and my forthcoming book) but the scientists rightfully recognise the need for conservation to “restore ecological functions at landscape scales”, even drawing the all-important link between biodiversity and climate change.
… the Paris Climate Agreement requires the Earth system to play its part in the global carbon cycle. The restoration of megafauna and their functional roles will need to be a key part of any nature-based climate solutions.
However, it’s not all about large megafauna. Steady stable-state ecosystems will require all animals in correct proportions. Tackling things at the systems level will mean reconnecting habitat and repatriating wildlife into the cycles that create clean water, fertile soil, rich fisheries and stable climate.
I have amended the article’s main diagram (below) as I think it fails to represent the magnitude of the risk for human existence. Animals aren’t at the centre, separated from earth systems. Animals are a consequence of processes that enabled ecosystems to stabilise. After all, it was only the rise of animals that gave life to humans (another animal).
In my version of the diagram (above), I have placed the physical and chemical structures at the centre. These are what determine the likelihood of human and animal distribution and relative abundance.
The consequence, in terms of climate stability and food security, is built on top of this by animals. This is the thin fabric that creates a habitable Earth for us … the stable climate and food security that it delivers, that enables humans to survive, are all animal-driven.
Our position is among the animals but for clarity sake, I’ve excised humans into their own concentric circle on the outside. The two-way arrows are there to indicate that the concentric systems are all interconnected. They are non-linear. However, humans exist mostly in the outer three domains. Primary producers like plants would do just fine without us, although their existence without animals would destabilise the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
Humans and animals exist in the outer-shell, locked into a shared past and future, by evolution, which favours not single animals, but communities that are best adapted together, to maintain ecosystems in a steady stable-state – the state that delivers our food. Climate stability and food security are tied to one another by animal impact* because they are the only thing that stabilises the chaos that would otherwise be wrought by primary producers on the landscapes and seascapes.
*Because we burn fossil fuels, we tend to think of climate change as being driven by carbon burning. Of course it is, but that’s got nothing to do with how ecosystems naturally work. In the absence of any fossil fuel burning, the process that stabilises Earth’s carbon chemistry is driven by animals. While we are preoccupied with addressing fossil fuel burning, we overlook the massive impact on ecosystems that mass extinction is having, as this is destabilising the underlying mechanism.
