Polar bears in the snow
Elisabet Zottl
From ecosystem level to species, down to genes and sequences, everything in nature is interconnected like a woven web. A fruit needs pollination, the soil needs bacteria to degrade plants, fish need plankton etc. Biodiversity underlies all ecosystem services such as water purification, disease regulation and fuel provisioning too.
This day is all about raising awareness of biodiversity. But how is biodiversity linked to Cambridge Carbon Footprint and Climate Change? Possibly the picture that springs into most peoples’ minds when thinking of biodiversity loss due to climate change are the polar bears. As a consequence of climate change sea levels are rising and polar bears’ habitat is diminishing.
Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. Climate change not only affects the air and ocean temperatures, it also affects the pattern of ocean and wind currents, alters the length of seasons and levels of precipitation. These climate changes affect habitats and behaviours of many species. According to the Journal Nature Climate Change even many common species will lose a lot of their present climate range should business ‘continue as usual’. According to the research model projected impacts of climate change on common species will be heaviest felt in areas with extreme climate, such as deserts and rainforests in America, Australia and Africa.
African elephant in waterhole
In 2004 the famous zoology professor Sverre Sjolander from Sweden said, ‘in a hundred years all the big mammals in Africa will be gone’. That’s not only a very dull picture, it’s quite disturbing and provoking too – but we are not left without tools to act.
So, ‘business as usual’ is forecasted to be very expensive for planet earth and its species. Our daily lives affect the planet we live on, what we shop, how we travel, the energy we use, what food we buy… There are many things that we can do to combat climate change.
By living a low carbon lifestyle the global emissions are cut we are able to curb the impact on biodiversity. If you want to develop your knowledge on how to live a low carbon life Cambridge Carbon Footprint offers ‘carbon conversations’ – next coming up in autumn!
Elisabet Zottl is a biologist who has worked with sustainable development and enforcement of CITES in Sweden. In between projects she has volunteered and conducted conservation research on reptiles and birds around the world.