The UN Biodiversity Conference, COP15, scheduled for completion on December 19. This weekend we look at how humanity depends on a healthy and thriving global ecosystem.
One million species are now said to be at risk of extinction, and as species loss continues to mount, ecosystem functions vital to human health and life will continue to be disrupted.
Ecosystems provide goods and services that sustain all life on this planet, including human life. Although we know a great deal about how many ecosystems function, they are often so complex and of such magnitude that humankind would find them impossible to replace, no matter how much money was spent on them.
The living laboratory
The majority of prescribed drugs in developed countries are derived from natural compounds produced by animals and plants. Billions of people in the developing world rely primarily on traditional herbal medicine for primary health care.
Many natural remedies are known; Painkillers like morphine from opium poppies, the antimalarial quinine from the bark of the South American cinchona tree, and the antibiotic penicillin, which is produced by microscopic fungi.
Microbes discovered in the soil of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) fight heart disease by lowering cholesterol levels. AZT, one of the first anti-HIV/AIDS drugs, comes from a large shallow-water sponge that lives in the Caribbeanand happens to be the same sponge that gave birth to antivirals to treat herpes, and is the source of the first sea-born cancer drug to be approved in the US.
A crucial reservoir for future healing
Only about 1.9 million species have been identified (and in many cases poorly studied) to date. It is believed that there are millions more who are completely unknown.
All living things are the result of a complex “living laboratory” that has been conducting its own clinical tests since the beginning of life – about 3.7 billion years ago. This natural pharmaceutical library holds countless undiscovered remedies if only we don’t destroy them before they are discovered.
Take the polar bear, now classified as “Vulnerable”. As its Arctic habitat melts due to climate change, the world’s largest terrestrial predator has become an icon of the dangers posed by rising global temperatures. It could also be a symbol of health. Polar bears accumulate massive amounts of fat before hibernation. Despite being fat to a degree life-threatening for humans, they are apparently immune to type II diabetes. They remain immobile for months, but their bones remain unchanged. They do not urinate when they are at rest, but their kidneys are undamaged. If we could understand and reproduce how bears detoxify waste during hibernation, we could potentially treat — and maybe even prevent — the toxicity of kidney failure in humans.
Currently, 13 percent of the world’s population is clinically obese, and the number of people with type II diabetes is expected to rise to 700 million by 2045 5 men will suffer osteoporosis-related fractures. In the US alone, kidney failure kills more than 82,000 people and costs the US economy $35 million a year. Polar bears have naturally evolved “solutions” to these problems – type II diabetes from obesity, osteoporosis from immobility, and toxicity from kidney failure – all of which cause suffering to millions of people.
Coral Reefs and Morphine
Another example are coral reefs, which are sometimes referred to as “rainforests of the sea” due to their high biodiversity. Among the myriad inhabitants of these reefs are cone snails, a predatory mollusk that hunts with darts that emit 200 different toxic compounds.
Exactly copying the toxic peptide found in a cone snail, the drug ziconotide is not only 1,000 times more potent than morphine, but also avoids the tolerance and dependence that opioids can cause. To date, of all 700 cone snail species, only six have been studied in detail, and of the potentially thousands of unique compounds they harbor, only 100 have been studied in detail. Coral reefs and all of their inhabitants are being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Providing chemical compounds is not the only way biodiversity is vital to our health. A surprising variety of species has helped revolutionize medical knowledge. Zebrafish have been central to our knowledge of how organs, particularly the heart, form; a microscopic roundworm has led to an understanding of “programmed cell death” (apoptosis), which not only regulates organ growth but, if disrupted, can cause cancer. Fruit flies and bacterial species mainly contributed to research that mapped the human genome.
There may be undiscovered species that, like scientific laboratory animals, possess characteristics that make them particularly well suited for the study and treatment of human diseases. Should these species be lost, their secrets will be lost with them.
What drives biodiversity loss?
The main factor currently driving biodiversity loss is habitat destruction – on land; in streams, rivers and lakes; and in the oceans.
Unless we significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels, Climate change alone is projected to put about a quarter or more of all species on land at risk of extinction by 2050even surpassing habitat loss as the greatest threat to life on land.
Species in the oceans and freshwater are also at great risk from climate change, particularly those like corals that live in ecosystems that are uniquely sensitive to warming, but the full extent of this risk has not yet been calculated.
Healthy planet, healthy people
Biodiversity losses affect human health in a variety of ways. The disruption of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity have major impacts on the origin, transmission and spread of many human infectious diseases. The causative agents of 60 percent of human infectious diseases, such as malaria and COVID, are zoonotic, meaning they got into our bodies after living in other animals.
The virus, which causes HIV/AIDS and has killed over 40 million people so far, likely jumped the species off of chimpanzees slaughtered for bushmeat in west-central Africa. All told, 10,000 zoonotic viruses capable of species-jumping to us could be silently circulating in the wild today.
Therefore, the One Health approach – a collaborative, multisectoral and transdisciplinary approach that brings together diverse intergovernmental agencies, governments and local and regional actors to jointly address human health and environmental health – is crucial to minimizing risk of future disease spread.
Selfishly, if the natural world is healthy, so will we.
Planetary Life Insurance
A key challenge for organizations working to conserve biodiversity is convincing others – particularly policymakers and the public – that people and our health are fundamentally dependent on the animals, plants and microbes with which we live we share this little planet. We are totally dependent on the goods and services that nature provides and we have no choice but to obtain them.
The World Economic Forum estimates that Half of the world’s GDP ($44 trillion) depends on nature. Globally, the annual revenue of the pharmaceutical industry is US$1.27 trillion, and in the US alone, healthcare costs over US$4 trillion each year.
In comparison, the amount of money needed to close the funding gap to conserve biodiversity is only $700 billion a year. For global health and life insurance, this number isn’t just a bargain, it’s a necessity.
Man cannot exist outside of nature. Conservation of the plants, animals and microbes with which we share our small planet is not voluntary, for it is these organisms that create the support systems that enable all life on earth, including human life.
The story is based on the UN Development Program (UNDP) Notebook, How our health depends on biodiversity.
