Quotes & Sayings About Biodiversity

The evolution of the cosmos invokes in me a sense of mystery; the increase in biodiversity invokes the response of humility; and an understanding of the evolution of death offers me helpful ways to think about my own death. — Ursula Goodenough

Brazil has one of the greatest natural patrimonies in terms of biodiversity. — Guilherme Leal

The greatest biodiversity of an species is typically found in the place where it first evolved
where nature first experimented white all the possibilities what an apple, or a potato or peach, could be. — Michael Pollan

The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour — Kofi Annan

With biobanking there's just another tool available to make sure that the land we actually conserve has better biodiversity values. It's usually more contiguous. You see, just because you preserve two dozen trees at the end of a development site doesn't mean that's a great habitat. — Frank Sartor

Look closely at nature. Every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has survived. Who are we to destroy or even diminish biodiversity? — E. O. Wilson

An agricultural landscape produces food but it also provides water, requires biodiversity to underpin soil function, pollination and other useful services, and also has value to society in terms of aesthetics and recreation — Tim Benton

When the forest is destroyed, when the river is dammed, when the biodiversity is stolen, when fields are waterlogged or turned saline because of economic activities, it is a question of survival for these people. So our environmental movements have been justice movements. — Vandana Shiva

I can't imagine anything more important than air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity. These are the things that keep us alive. — David Suzuki

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars. — David Attenborough

Little by little people are understanding that we need to change, but whatever we decide to do in next 10 to 15 years will decide the future of biodiversity on Earth. — Anthony D. Barnosky

Food security is an authentically human requirement. Guaranteeing it for present and future generations also means safeguarding ourselves against the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. Indeed, the process of consumption and waste seems to overlook any concern for ... biodiversity, which is so important for agriculture. — Pope Benedict XVI

Finding mechanisms for putting carbon back into landscapes enhances biodiversity. More biodiverse ecosystems store more carbon, more securely and are more resilient to the impacts of climate change. — Will Steffen

It is about time that the religious and environmental faithful joined forces. No one wins when divisive politics pits the right to human life against the sanctity of biodiversity, or family values against ecosystem services. There are infinite compatible reasons to love, cherish and steward Earth. — Alex Bruce

Biodiversity is the greatest treasure we have ... Its diminishment is to be prevented at all cost. — Thomas Eisner

Ethiopia is the center of origin and diversity for the majority of coffee we drink. The commodification of coffee pushes farmers to grow as much as possible by whatever means possible. This has contributed to deforestation. The place where coffee was born - the area with the greatest biodiversity of coffee anywhere in the world - could disappear. No forest, no coffee. No coffee, no forest. What we lose isn't specific to Ethiopia; it impacts us all. — Preeti Simran Sethi

Through the art of personal development, we see an opportunity for these animals to inspire compassion, essentially creating a path to deep personal growth. This program [Animal sanctuary] will deploy ISF's youth development program, U Factor. The program helps youth identify their passion, cultivate their talent, amplify their purpose, and connect the younger generation to diminishing species and biodiversity. — Ian Somerhalder

Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding. — Helen Clark

We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight. — David Foreman

Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work. — Thomas Lovejoy

You begin paying more attention to what you're seeing when you know the names ... If you don't know the names of plant and animal species that share your neighbourhood, you don't care about them and can't protect biodiversity. — Robert Bateman

Planners and designers should encourage as much diversity in human habitats as they find in animal habitats. It is not possible to resolve all conflicts or to gain all ends. Choices have to be made. Different aspects of the public good should be stressed in different places. To achieve variety in land use patterns, there should also be a variety of relationships between the professions, not an institutionalized decision-making tree. Relationships between the constructive professions should, therefore, be deconstructed. — Tom Turner

Abundant data support the importance of biodiversity in health, and its loss causes various inflammatory conditions, including asthma, allergic and inflammatory bowel diseases, type 1 diabetes, liver disease, obesity, and much more. — Gerard E. Mullin

Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises - car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change ... — David Suzuki

Make the wrong choices now and future generations will live with a changed climate, depleted resources and without the green space and biodiversity that contribute both to our standard of living and our quality of life — Tony Blair

The beauty in the genome is of course that it's so small. The human genome is only on the order of a gigabyte of data ... which is a tiny little database. If you take the entire living biosphere, that's the assemblage of 20 million species or so that constitute all the living creatures on the planet, and you have a genome for every species the total is still about one petabyte, that's a million gigabytes - that's still very small compared with Google or the Wikipedia and it's a database that you can easily put in a small room, easily transmit from one place to another. And somehow mother nature manages to create this incredible biosphere, to create this incredibly rich environment of animals and plants with this amazingly small amount of data. — Freeman Dyson

Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs. — Saadi

We tell stories with maps about global warming, biodiversity; we can design more livable cities, track the spread of epidemics. That makes a difference. — Jack Dangermond

The center of the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Biodiversity, there's an exhibit embedded in the floor. The exhibit is arranged around a central plaque that notes there have been five major extinction events since complex animals evolved, over five hundred million years ago. According to the plaque, "Global climate change and other causes, probably including collisions between earth and extraterrestrial objects," were responsible for these events. It goes on to observe: "Right now we are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, this time caused solely by humanity's transformation of the ecological landscape. — Elizabeth Kolbert

On the intimate level, anyone who has loved a companion animal knows the uniquely wonderful experience these 'other nations' provide, and their important presence in our shared lives. In their very local way they show us the global truth of our real wealth, our biodiversity. — April Gornik

The reality is fuck the animals, fuck biodiversity, fuck the laws, and long live construction," [Ricardo Freitas] said. "All of this is being done because some people will make a lot of money, and it's being done with no monitoring, no support, no rescue of species. — Juliana Barbassa

First thing the developer has to do is to get an assessment of the threatened species, of the ecological values of that site. At the moment, that developer lodges an application, there's usually trade-offs, negotiations, you end up with remnant bits of land. You might end up with some other offset land that the public has to run. There's no cohesive system of then making sure that we maintain and improve biodiversity values. — Frank Sartor

The only biodiversity we're going to have left is Coke versus Pepsi. We're landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time. — Chuck Palahniuk

It's worse than slave trade because what is being traded is the very knowledge that makes survival possible for 80 percent of the people of this world. These 80 percent live on the biodiversity and the knowledge they have evolved as part of a rich collective heritage involving the use of seeds for growing crops and medicinal plants for healing. — Vandana Shiva

Captain Falco saw the diminishment of biodiversity in our oceans over a span of nearly seven decades. He was dedicated to the protection of life and habitats in the sea. He was a legendary mariner, diver, oceanographer, and conservationist. The world is a better place because of him. — Paul Watson

We must convince and empower people to adopt the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity as their guiding principle. — Klaus Topfer

A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree. — Edward O. Wilson

Our food is safer and our diets are more diverse than ever before; production methods are becoming increasingly sustainable, clean and efficient; and we are constantly becoming better at protecting biodiversity. — Louise Fresco

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady. — Edward O. Wilson

I am a great supporter of bionics and this diversity in nature, this genetic diversity, is not available for free. We, as industrialized nations, have already sinned enough, and we have significantly reduced biodiversity in our countries. But now we expect the poor, less developed countries of the world to preserve their rainforests, mangrove forests and coral landscapes for us at no charge. — Klaus Topfer

The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors.
They all need to go on safari together. — Thomas L. Friedman

Another expert, David Jablonski, characterizes mass extinctions as "substantial biodiversity losses" that occur rapidly and are "global in extent. — Elizabeth Kolbert

And we really should be considering the moral implications of what we're doing. What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply? There are those who think that's the destiny of Earth: We arrived, we're humanizing the Earth, and it will be the destiny of Earth for us to wipe humans out and most of the rest of biodiversity. But I think the great majority of thoughtful people consider that a morally wrong position to take, and a very dangerous one. — Edward O. Wilson

Biodiversity starts in the distant past and it points toward the future. — Frans Lanting

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc. — Edward Norton

A sign in the Hall of Biodiversity offers a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich: IN PUSHING OTHER SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, HUMANITY IS BUSY SAWING OFF THE LIMB ON WHICH IT PERCHES. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril. — E. O. Wilson

In my world, you don't get to call yourself "pro-life" and be against common-sense gun control - like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don't get to call yourself "pro-life" and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don't get to call yourself "pro-life" and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children ... The term "pro-life" should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. — Thomas L. Friedman

Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well. — Linus Torvalds

We see evidence that lakes and forests and wetlands can have different equilibria - so you have a savanna system that may be stable and thriving, but it can also tip over and become an arid steppe if pushed too far by warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. — Johan Rockstrom

We have a very old conservation movement, particularly in the United States, which has focused on campaigns to protect endangered species: the spotted owl, the old-growth forest. But usually it stops there. To me, biodiversity is the full spectrum. Species conservation is not only about wilderness conservation. It's also about protecting the livelihood of people even while changing the dominant relationship that humans have had with other species. In India, it's an economic issue, not just an ecological one. — Vandana Shiva

Every time we lose a species webreak a life chain which has evolved over 3.5 billion years. — Jeff McNeely

I love nature dearly and all creatures that contribute to make it what it is. I see the beauty in all expressions of life, and I see how blind so many of us still are. Our planet is remarkably abundant and there's more than enough for us all.It is greed and shortsightedness that create the illusion of scarcity. — Yossi Ghinsberg

Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity. — Martin Rees

Excessive gentrification destroys the biodiversity and ecosystem of a community. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet. — Wes Jackson

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us. — David Suzuki

Depending on which biologist you speak to, between thirty-six and forty total phyla are recognized on our planet. Rainforests, our flagships of biodiversity, are known to contain sixteen phyla. The spaces in between sand grains are home to twenty-two. — Michael Welland

There are some things in the world we can't change- gravity, entropy, the speed of light, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere. — David Suzuki

We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own. — Diane Ackerman

We have environmental laws for a reason: to protect endangered biodiversity. And as a country that has one of the highest loss of species anywhere in the world, they're important. — Richard Di Natale

The activities of La Condamine, Humboldt, Wallace, Bates, and other such explorers touched on only the tiniest fraction of the vastness of a world so expansive as to be impervious to harm. But today, the Amazon River Basin, occupying more than 2.7 million square miles is at our fingertips and is considered one of the most ecologically threatened regions of the world. — Kurt Johnson

It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependent on basic natural resources - land, air, water and biodiversity - for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment. — Klaus Topfer

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone. — Donella Meadows

Environmentalists believe that monolithic solutions - be they in the auto, nuclear, or genetics field - are doomed to fail and lead only along the path to dependence. They feel rather that it is far more sensible to approach the future by opening up more possibilities. Likewise, polyamorists believe that monogamy sterilizes love and fosters unhealthy codependence, whereas multiple relationships feed off of each other's differences and ultimately lead to an enriching fulfillment. — Francoise Simpere

Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn't pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts. — Stephen Fry

The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves. — Edward O. Wilson

Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland. — Sarah Hall

We need to act now. Otherwise the biodiversity that makes Australia so wonderfully unique is going to be lost to us forever. — Kristy Hinze

the encyclical also deals with poverty, the destruction of biodiversity, the pollution of fresh water and the oceans, sustainable food, extractive industries, and the waste created by the global economy. — Pope Francis

Prioritize life over profit by rejecting GNP in favor of indicators that measure biodiversity, community coherence, personal well-being, and other life-affirming criteria; radically reducing public spending on "defense"; granting legal rights to ecosystems and nonhuman species; rewriting educational curricula to meet community and environmental needs rather than the needs of industry. ========== Revolution (Russell Brand) — Anonymous

For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity. — Vandana Shiva

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity ... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world. — Gaylord Nelson

Yet, despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems, including global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity. — Dan Lipinski

I also have an idea for a book on biodiversity, and why and how we should be conserving it. — Ken Thompson

Nearly every historic fruit and vegetable variety once found in the United States has disappeared. — Preeti Simran Sethi

People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity. — Sylvia Earle

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents. — Preston Manning

Man has created death. — William Butler Yeats

One gram of moss from the forest floor, a piece about the size of a muffin, would harbour 150,000 protozoa, 132,000 tardigrades, 3,000 springtails, 800 rotifers, 500 nematodes, 400 mites, and 200 fly larvae. These numbers tell us something about the astounding quantity of life in a handful of moss. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Agricultural demand for water - probably the largest threat to freshwater species - continues to increase ... Meanwhile, threats to terrestrial biodiversity - primarily the conversion of habitat to agricultural uses ... - have not diminished. — Indur M. Goklany

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet. — Guilherme Leal

This is the rollcall of evolution happening in the space of a few generations, the greatest loss of living things that make up our biodiversity since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. — Peter Garrett

Even if we act immediately, the world is doomed to lose many of its animal and plant species and this inturn will reduce the ability of ecosystems to deliver vital services to human populations. The Red List gives all of us a practical tool for raising awareness of the biodiversity crisis and for forging new partnerships within the international community. — Achim Steiner

I fought hard for such a framing at the Conference of the Parties 6 in The Hague in 2000, but was opposed not by the usual suspects - industrial interests and OPEC - but rather by those who were more "green" - World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and European Green Party delegates. I was dumbfounded. Why didn't they want to support a plan to both keep carbon in the forests and get a double bonus of biodiversity protection? The debates were heated. I thought the argument against it - no baseline for additionality - was legitimate, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Baselines are negotiable, and protecting primary forests should at least have been on the agenda. The passion of the opponents seemed totally misplaced. One evening during COP 6, I went to the environment NGOs' tent for a reception. In this more informal setting, — Stephen H. Schneider

Lack of accountability weakens the environmental and health rights of citizens; it damages peace- building and reconciliation initiatives; impedes the implementation of global health policies; leads to the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity; and weakens democracy, justice, human rights, and international security. — Widad Akreyi

Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants. — Cary Fowler

Our presence is not inherently evil and undesirable; it just has to be at the right scale, speed, and design. We can be an expression of biodiversity as worthy as any other species with whom we have co-evolved; we have a place and a vibrant role to play in ecosystems. It is our wild excess of procreation, ill-considered consumption priorities, and unbridled frenzy of activity that drowns the possibilities and existence of individuals from other species. That is where we have gone wrong. — Will Anderson

The whole new layer on top of what I was thinking about in the nineteen-seventies is climate change," Lovejoy told me. He has written that "in the face of climatic change, even natural climatic change, human activity has created an obstacle course for the dispersal of biodiversity," the result of which could be "one of the greatest biotic crises of all time. — Elizabeth Kolbert

The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter. — Wangari Maathai

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Protecting biodiversity is just as important and critical to the survival of mankind as stabilizing the climate. Species protection and climate are interdependent. — Klaus Topfer

biodiversity actually begins in the soil. — Judith D. Schwartz

At the end of the century, humans will look back at our impact on the planet and World War II will be a footnote compared to us presiding over the largest loss of biodiversity since a meteor hit the planet sixty-five million years ago. — Louie Psihoyos

When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished. — Theodore Roosevelt

I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. — Stephen Fry

It's a phenomenon that started in the United States in which corporations make claims on the life forms, biodiversity and innovations of other cultures by applying for patents on them. — Vandana Shiva

A sound-bite culture can't discuss science very well. Exactly what we're losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can't be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up. — Barbara Kingsolver

I'm saying that mushrooms are very clever at surveying a landscape and taking a long-term view of the health of the population of the descendent organisms that give rise to the forest, that create the debris fields, that feed the fungi, that help the fungi's own progeny live downstream. They take a very advanced view of ecosystem health and management, trying to increase soil depth, and, by increasing soil depth and the richness of the soil, to increase the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Higher carrying capacity leads to more biodiversity, more sustainability, more resiliency. — Derrick Jensen

The system of seeds based on monoculture is wrong and inappropriate. The biodiverse system has produced more food, and biodiversity means that seeds must be in the hands of farmers. — Vandana Shiva