Biodiversity and climate change

Abstract

Life on Earth’s wide variety has been exposed to constant climate changes. The need to adapt to new patterns of temperature and rainfall has a major influence on evolutionary changes of plants and animals species.

Nowadays, climate change poses a major threat to biodiversity, understood as the variability among living organisms from all sources (1), and it is expected that biodiversity in the coming decades will become a force for increasingly important changes (2).

There are several reasons why plants and animals are less able to adapt to the current phase of global warming. One is the rapid pace of change. Over the next century, according to scientific estimates, the rising of the average global temperatures will be faster than that experienced over at least 10 thousand years. Numerous species simply cannot adapt quickly enough to the new conditions or move to more suitable areas for their survival.

Equally worrying are the huge changes that human beings have made in the landscapes, river basins and oceans, blocking survival options previously available to species already under pressure from a changing climate. There are also other factors induced by man: pollution from fertilizers such as nitrogen, the introduction of invasive alien species and the over-exploitation of wild animals through hunting or fishing, which reduces the resilience of ecosystems and therefore the probability of their natural adaptation to climate change. This has important implications not only for the variety of life on our planet, but also for the sustainability of man worldwide. In the evaluation of the Millennium Ecosystem, it showed that the poor living in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to the loss of essential services when an ecosystem is degraded. For example, the appropriate use of farmland, the availability of medicinal plants, the supply of fresh water and the income gained from ecotourism are all underpinned by the web of life and the interaction of species, from the smallest microorganisms to the largest predators. The loss of these services has an especially devastating impact on the poor, who have no other options available (2, 3).

Climate change directly affects the functions of individual organisms, for example, growth and behavior; it modifies the size and structure populations, and affects the structure and function of the ecosystem in its decomposition and nutrient cycling, water flows, species composition and interactions between species, and the distribution of ecosystems within landscapes; and affects indirectly through changes in disturbance regimes (1).

In response to climate change, many terrestrial, freshwater and marine areas have altered their geographical distribution, seasonal activities, migratory patterns, abundance and interactions with other species. (While only a few recent species extinctions have occurred.) The natural global climate change at speeds lower than the current anthropogenic climate change caused significant changes, in the last million years, in ecosystems and species extinctions. Based on many studies that cover a wide spectrum of regions and crops, the negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than the positive impacts, and climate change has adversely affected the performance of wheat and corn in many regions of the globe. The effects on the yield of rice and soybeans were lower in the major production regions, showing all available data, zero change in the media; these effects are minor in the case of soybeans compared to other crops. Since the Fourth Assessment Report, the various periods of rapid increases in food and grain prices that follow extreme weather events in major producing regions indicate that the markets are currently sensitive, among other factors, to climate extreme fluctuations (4).

Faced with this problem of overall size, it is important to know the status of biodiversity in our region. In this regard; the Peruvian and Chilean cases are described in order to improve our levels of commitment on the sustainable use of our biodiversity.

The biodiversity of Peru in recent years has made significant progress in some areas; for example, the management of regional conservation systems and the dynamics of private conservation areas have become increasingly important. Similarly, it has strengthened food security of the population, thanks to the new approach being implemented in the Fishery (Ministry of Production) sector. Also the management of biodiversity has been strengthened through the development and updating of strategies and plans (national and regional) biodiversity, wetlands, and bio; strengthening various sectoral committees, such as the law moratorium on income and production of living modified organisms (GMOs), Wetlands and Marine Environment; technical standards for biosafety; increasing knowledge of threatened species, genetic resources, ecosystems and biosafety; building baselines and distribution maps of the genetic diversity of species important for conservation and domestic production (5).

The path followed by Chile on biodiversity and climate change highlights the relationship between the experiences of our neighboring countries. This country has a biodiversity characterized by high species endemism (25 %) in different ecosystems of small size, home to some 30 000 species. Central and southern Chile is considered one of the 35 global biodiversity hotspots and also ranked as one of the most threatened by the WWF Global 200 initiative and the World Bank. Protected areas, meanwhile, are also an important source of economic value, contributing approximately USD 2000 to USD 2400 million a year at least in services. Chile bases its economy on the exploitation of natural resources without taking into account the mining sector, which contributes 12 % to GDP and 60 % of total exports; sectors that depend directly on the provision of renewable natural resources, such as forestry, fisheries, agriculture and tourism, account for 9,7 % of GDP, and generate at least 1 million direct jobs (6).

Peru has an estimated loss of 5 % in biodiversity while Chile 7 %.  Also, many endangered species have been identified, in the case of Peru 120 mammals against 69 from Chile (7), cases that should motivate us to take responsibility in the preservation of our rich national biodiversity.