If in the field of biology, biodiversity refers to the number of populations of organisms and different species, for ecologists the concept includes the diversity of durable interactions between species and their immediate environment or biotope, the ecosystem in which the organisms live. In each ecosystem, living organisms are part of a whole, interacting with each other, but also with the air, water, and soil that surround them.

Three levels of biodiversity are usually distinguished:[9].

The internal diversity of ecosystems must also be included, to which the term ecological diversity traditionally refers.

The biodiversity found on Earth today is the result of four billion years of evolution.[10]​.

Although the origin of life has not been able to be dated precisely, evidence suggests that it may have emerged between 3,800[11]​[12][13]​ to 3,235 million years ago.[14]​ Some more recent research has opened the possibility that it may have begun even 4,100 million years ago[15]​ although they are not yet conclusive. Until approximately 600 million years ago, all life consisted of bacteria and microorganisms.[11]​.

The history of biological diversity during the Phanerozoic—last 540 million years—begins with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion, a period during which phyla of multicellular organisms first appeared.[16]​ During the following 400 million years, global biodiversity showed relative progress, but was marked by specific events of mass extinctions.[17]​.

The apparent biodiversity shown by the fossil record suggests that the recent few million years include the most biodiverse period in Earth's history. However, not all scientists hold this point of view, since it is not easy to determine whether the abundant fossil record is due to an explosion in biodiversity, or—simply—to the better availability and conservation of the most recent geological strata.

Some, like Alroy and others[18]​ think that by improving sampling, modern biodiversity is not too different from that of 300 million years ago. Estimates of current macroscopic species vary from 2 to 100 million, with a logical value estimable at approximately 10 million species.[16]​.

Most biologists agree that the period since the appearance and global dispersal of humans is part of a new mass extinction, called the Holocene extinction event or sixth mass extinction, caused mainly by the impact that humans have on terrestrial and marine ecosystems.[19]​[20]​

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the current rate of species extinction is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rates that would be recorded without human presence.[21] This rate "exceeds several times the average of the last ten million years", and at least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the century .[22]​

The 2019 IPBES global report warns that approximately one million species are at risk of extinction, and that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.[23]​[24]​ While the total number of species extinct due to human activity does not yet match the losses seen in the great mass extinctions of the geological past, scientists warn that the rate of species extinction is accelerating.

There is scientific debate about the timing of this crisis: some researchers estimate that if climate change persists, 25% of species could disappear in the coming decades,[25]​ while other models suggest that the current rate of extinction could continue for several millennia before biodiversity loss exceeds the 20% threshold observed in mass extinctions of the past.

Despite the extinction crisis, new species are regularly discovered—an average of two to three per year in the case of birds—[26]​ and many already discovered have not yet been classified: it is estimated that approximately 40% of South America's freshwater fish remain without complete scientific classification due to lack of sufficient data.[27]​.

Contenido

El valor esencial y fundamental de la biodiversidad reside en que es resultado de un proceso histórico natural de gran antigüedad. Por esta sola razón, la diversidad biológica tiene el inalienable derecho de continuar su existencia. El hombre y su cultura, como producto y parte de esta diversidad, debe velar por protegerla y respetarla.

Además la biodiversidad es garante de bienestar y equilibrio en la biosfera. Los elementos diversos que componen la biodiversidad conforman verdaderas unidades funcionales, que aportan y aseguran muchos de los “servicios” básicos para nuestra supervivencia.

Finalmente desde nuestra condición humana, la diversidad también representa un capital natural.[28]​ El uso y beneficio de la biodiversidad ha contribuido de muchas maneras al desarrollo de la cultura humana, y representa una fuente potencial para subvenir a necesidades futuras.

Considerando la diversidad biológica desde el punto de vista de sus usos presentes y potenciales y de sus beneficios, es posible agrupar los argumentos en tres categorías principales.

The ecological aspect

It refers to the role of biological diversity from a systemic and functional point of view (ecosystems). Being indispensable to our own survival, many of these functions are usually called “services”.

The elements that constitute the biological diversity of an area are the natural regulators of the flows of energy and matter. They fulfill an important function in the regulation and stabilization of lands and coastal areas "Coastal (geography)"). For example, on mountain slopes, the diversity of species in the vegetation layer forms true tissues that protect the underlying inert layers from the mechanical action of elements such as wind and runoff water. Biodiversity plays a determining role in atmospheric and climatic processes. Many exchanges and effects of continental masses and oceans with the atmosphere are a product of living elements (albedo effect, evapotranspiration, carbon cycle, etc.).

The biotic diversity of a natural system is one of the determining factors in the recovery and reconversion processes of waste and nutrients. In addition, some ecosystems have organisms or communities capable of degrading toxins, or fixing and stabilizing dangerous compounds naturally.

Even with the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals, biological diversity is essential to maintain the proper functioning of agroecosystems, since it guarantees the fertility of the land, the natural pollination of several domestic species, the effective control of pests, etc. Trophodynamic regulation of biological populations is only possible by respecting the delicate networks established in nature. The imbalance in these relationships has already been shown to have important negative consequences.[29] This is even more evident with marine resources, where the majority of food sources consumed in the world are captured directly from the environment. The response to disturbances (natural or anthropogenic) takes place at a systemic level, through response pathways that tend to return to the initial equilibrium situation. However, human activities have increased dramatically in intensity, irremediably affecting the biological diversity of some ecosystems and in many cases violating this response capacity with catastrophic results.

Research suggests that a more diverse ecosystem is better able to withstand environmental stress and is therefore more productive. The loss of a species is likely to decrease the system's ability to maintain or recover from damage or disturbance. Like a species with high genetic diversity, a high biodiversity ecosystem may have more opportunities to adapt to environmental change. In other words: the more species an ecosystem comprises, the more likely it is that the ecosystem will be stable and resilient. The mechanisms underlying these effects are complex and hotly disputed. However, in recent years it has become clear that there really are ecological effects of biodiversity.

A high availability of resources in the environment favors greater biomass "Biomass (ecology)"), but also ecological dominance") and relatively nutrient-poor ecosystems frequently present greater diversity, something that is systematically true in aquatic ecosystems. Greater biodiversity allows an ecosystem to better resist large environmental changes, making it less vulnerable, more resilient "Resilience (ecology)") in that the state of the system depends on the interrelationships between species and the disappearance of any of them is less crucial for the stability of the whole than in ecosystems that are less diverse and more marked by dominance.

The economic aspect

For all humans, biodiversity is the first resource for daily life. An important aspect is crop diversity, which is also called agrobiodiversity.

Most people see biodiversity as a storehouse of resources useful for manufacturing food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. This concept of biological resources explains most of the fears of resource disappearance. However, it is also the origin of new conflicts over the division and appropriation of natural resources.

Some of the important economic items that biodiversity provides to humanity are:.

Ecologists and ecological activists were the first to insist on the economic aspect of protecting biological diversity.

The estimation of the value of biodiversity is a necessary prior condition to any discussion on the distribution of its riches. This value can be discriminated between use value (direct such as tourism or indirect such as pollination) and intrinsic value.

If biological resources represent an ecological interest for the community, their economic value is also increasing. New products are developed due to biotechnologies and new markets. For society, biodiversity is also a field of activity and profit. It requires an appropriate governance arrangement to determine how these resources will be used.

The current and future economic importance of most species has yet to be assessed. However, we must be aware that we still have a long way to go to know how to accurately calculate, not only the economic aspect but, much more importantly, the value that each species has for its ecosystem.

The demographic and economic expansion of the human species is generally considered to be setting in motion a mass extinction, of incomparably larger dimensions than any previous extinction. The specific causes are the indiscriminate disappearance of ecosystems, due to the felling of forests, soil degradation, environmental pollution, excessive hunting and fishing, etc. The scientific community generally judges that such extinction represents a threat to the biosphere's ability to support human life through various natural services and renewable resources.

Therefore, understanding cultural biodiversity in its relationship with ecosystems is key, as long as natural resources are not dissociated from their cultural, historical and geographical context.

The scientific aspect

Biodiversity is important since each species can give scientists a clue about the evolution of life. Furthermore, biodiversity helps science understand how the life process works and the role that each species has in ecosystems.

Parameters

Diversity is a phenomenological property that aims to express the variety of different elements. As a fundamental quality of our perception, we feel the need to quantify it. The development of a measure that allows biological diversity to be expressed in a clear and comparable manner presents difficulties and limitations. It is not simply about measuring a variation of one or several common elements, but rather about quantifying and weighing how many different elements or groups of elements exist. The existing diversity measures are therefore nothing more than quantitative or semi-quantitative models of a qualitative reality with very clear limits regarding their applications and scope. The development of a logical and coherent mathematical concept for modeling biological diversity at a specific and genetic level has been widely explored and presents a synthetic and robust body. The modeling of diversity at the ecosystem level is more recent, and has benefited from technological advances (such as GIS).[33]​ The simplest diversity measures consist of mathematical indices that express the amount of information and the degree of its organization. Basically the metric expressions of diversity take into account three aspects:

Each of these diversity indices is one-dimensional and of limited reading. Comparisons and assessments of biological diversity are necessarily incomplete in these terms. They are used due to their practical and synthetic nature, but insufficient compared to alternative multi-scale and multi-dimensional analytical models that better respond to specific conservation and management needs. Thus, two-dimensional modeling (richness and relative abundance) can be considered the “classical” standard for measuring and expressing diversity. According to the spatial scale at which biological diversity is measured, we speak of alpha diversity (punctual diversity, represented by α), beta (diversity between habitats, represented by β) and gamma (diversity at a regional scale, represented by γ). These terms were coined by Robert Whittaker in 1960 and are generally widely accepted.

Dynamic

Biodiversity is not static: it is a constantly evolving system, both in each species, as well as in each individual organism. A current species may have started one to four million years ago, and 99% of the species that have ever existed on Earth are extinct.

Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on earth. It is richest in the tropics, and as one approaches the polar regions larger populations and fewer species are found. The flora and fauna vary, depending on the climate, altitude, soil and the presence of other species.

Spatial units and biodiversity

The distribution of current biological diversity is the result of evolutionary, biogeographic and ecological processes over time since the appearance of life on earth. Its existence, conservation and evolution depends on the environmental factors that make it possible. Each species has specific environmental requirements without which it is not possible to survive. Although orographic and oceanographic, altitudinal and latitudinal changes allow us to define landscape units with a fair degree of approximation, the specific component of the species present is what ultimately allows us to identify relatively homogeneous areas in terms of the characteristics they present or offer for biological populations.

These biosphere units can be identified as biodiversity units according to different assessment criteria: for example, the number of endemisms, specific, ecosystemic or phylogenetic richness. Although it is common to argue that this or that country has certain biodiversity indices, the spatial units of biological diversity are by definition independent of geopolitical limits or barriers.

Two of the current spatial units of the biosphere, where the biodiversity factor precedes in importance, are the ecoregions of the Global 200[34]​ identified by the WWF and the biodiversity hot spots "Hot Spot (biodiversity)") or hotspots of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[35]​.

Global 200 identifies the most important ecoregions on the planet, both marine and continental—freshwater and terrestrial bodies—according to specific richness, the number of endemisms and conservation states.[36]​.

The term "biodiversity hotspot" was coined by Norman Myers in 1998 and identifies important terrestrial biogeographic regions according to the number of endemisms and the degree of threat to biodiversity.[37]​ In its latest review Conservation International proposes 34 hotspots.

El 80% de la biodiversidad mundial existe en territorios indígenas.

Sin embargo, la actividad y el estilo de vida de los países desarrollados fomenta una explotación del mundo natural que afecta tanto a los derechos humanos de estos pueblos como a la biodiversidad.[38]​.

Durante el siglo se ha venido observando la erosión cada vez más acelerada de la biodiversidad. Las estimaciones sobre las proporciones de la extinción son variadas, entre muy pocas y hasta 201 especies extintas por día, pero todos los científicos reconocen que la proporción de pérdida de especies es mayor que en cualquier época de la historia humana.

En el reino vegetal se estima que se encuentran amenazadas aproximadamente un 12,5 % de las especies actualmente conocidas. Todos están de acuerdo en que las pérdidas se deben a la actividad humana, incluyendo la destrucción directa de plantas y su hábitat.

Existe también una creciente preocupación por la introducción humana de especies exóticas en hábitats determinados, alterando la cadena trófica.[39]​.

El cambio climático juega un papel cada vez más significativo en la decadencia de la biodiversidad. Afecta a la salud de los ecosistemas alterando la distribución de plantas, animales, virus y los asentamientos humanos.[40]​.

Human activities aimed at development that can affect biodiversity

Some examples of development activities that may have the most significant negative consequences for biological diversity are:

Cultural biodiversity can meaningfully be added to the above. Work on biological biodiversity is incorporating the study, promotion and protection of cultural biodiversity, in addition to specific biodiversity, ecosystems and genetics.

Eugenio Reyes Naranjo[45] defines Cultural Biodiversity as diversity of knowledge that human beings have developed throughout history in their relationship with biodiversity.

This includes beliefs, myths, dreams, legends, language, scientific knowledge, psychological attitudes in the broadest possible sense, management, use, enjoyment and understanding of the natural environment.

It is about understanding biological evolution taking into account all aspects of human intervention.

Spain

In Spain, the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law is in force.[46]​.

The instruments for knowledge and planning of natural heritage and biodiversity are:[46]​.

In the conservation of biodiversity, it is concerned with:.

In relation to the sustainable use of natural heritage and biodiversity:.

Likewise, it also deals with the Ecological Restoration and Resilience Fund (FRER) (FCOJ).

If in the field of biology, biodiversity refers to the number of populations of organisms and different species, for ecologists the concept includes the diversity of durable interactions between species and their immediate environment or biotope, the ecosystem in which the organisms live. In each ecosystem, living organisms are part of a whole, interacting with each other, but also with the air, water, and soil that surround them.

Three levels of biodiversity are usually distinguished:[9].

The internal diversity of ecosystems must also be included, to which the term ecological diversity traditionally refers.

The biodiversity found on Earth today is the result of four billion years of evolution.[10]​.

Although the origin of life has not been able to be dated precisely, evidence suggests that it may have emerged between 3,800[11]​[12][13]​ to 3,235 million years ago.[14]​ Some more recent research has opened the possibility that it may have begun even 4,100 million years ago[15]​ although they are not yet conclusive. Until approximately 600 million years ago, all life consisted of bacteria and microorganisms.[11]​.

The history of biological diversity during the Phanerozoic—last 540 million years—begins with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion, a period during which phyla of multicellular organisms first appeared.[16]​ During the following 400 million years, global biodiversity showed relative progress, but was marked by specific events of mass extinctions.[17]​.

The apparent biodiversity shown by the fossil record suggests that the recent few million years include the most biodiverse period in Earth's history. However, not all scientists hold this point of view, since it is not easy to determine whether the abundant fossil record is due to an explosion in biodiversity, or—simply—to the better availability and conservation of the most recent geological strata.

Some, like Alroy and others[18]​ think that by improving sampling, modern biodiversity is not too different from that of 300 million years ago. Estimates of current macroscopic species vary from 2 to 100 million, with a logical value estimable at approximately 10 million species.[16]​.

Most biologists agree that the period since the appearance and global dispersal of humans is part of a new mass extinction, called the Holocene extinction event or sixth mass extinction, caused mainly by the impact that humans have on terrestrial and marine ecosystems.[19]​[20]​

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the current rate of species extinction is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rates that would be recorded without human presence.[21] This rate "exceeds several times the average of the last ten million years", and at least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the century .[22]​

The 2019 IPBES global report warns that approximately one million species are at risk of extinction, and that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.[23]​[24]​ While the total number of species extinct due to human activity does not yet match the losses seen in the great mass extinctions of the geological past, scientists warn that the rate of species extinction is accelerating.

There is scientific debate about the timing of this crisis: some researchers estimate that if climate change persists, 25% of species could disappear in the coming decades,[25]​ while other models suggest that the current rate of extinction could continue for several millennia before biodiversity loss exceeds the 20% threshold observed in mass extinctions of the past.

Despite the extinction crisis, new species are regularly discovered—an average of two to three per year in the case of birds—[26]​ and many already discovered have not yet been classified: it is estimated that approximately 40% of South America's freshwater fish remain without complete scientific classification due to lack of sufficient data.[27]​.

Contenido

El valor esencial y fundamental de la biodiversidad reside en que es resultado de un proceso histórico natural de gran antigüedad. Por esta sola razón, la diversidad biológica tiene el inalienable derecho de continuar su existencia. El hombre y su cultura, como producto y parte de esta diversidad, debe velar por protegerla y respetarla.

Además la biodiversidad es garante de bienestar y equilibrio en la biosfera. Los elementos diversos que componen la biodiversidad conforman verdaderas unidades funcionales, que aportan y aseguran muchos de los “servicios” básicos para nuestra supervivencia.

Finalmente desde nuestra condición humana, la diversidad también representa un capital natural.[28]​ El uso y beneficio de la biodiversidad ha contribuido de muchas maneras al desarrollo de la cultura humana, y representa una fuente potencial para subvenir a necesidades futuras.

Considerando la diversidad biológica desde el punto de vista de sus usos presentes y potenciales y de sus beneficios, es posible agrupar los argumentos en tres categorías principales.

The ecological aspect

It refers to the role of biological diversity from a systemic and functional point of view (ecosystems). Being indispensable to our own survival, many of these functions are usually called “services”.

The elements that constitute the biological diversity of an area are the natural regulators of the flows of energy and matter. They fulfill an important function in the regulation and stabilization of lands and coastal areas "Coastal (geography)"). For example, on mountain slopes, the diversity of species in the vegetation layer forms true tissues that protect the underlying inert layers from the mechanical action of elements such as wind and runoff water. Biodiversity plays a determining role in atmospheric and climatic processes. Many exchanges and effects of continental masses and oceans with the atmosphere are a product of living elements (albedo effect, evapotranspiration, carbon cycle, etc.).

The biotic diversity of a natural system is one of the determining factors in the recovery and reconversion processes of waste and nutrients. In addition, some ecosystems have organisms or communities capable of degrading toxins, or fixing and stabilizing dangerous compounds naturally.

Even with the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals, biological diversity is essential to maintain the proper functioning of agroecosystems, since it guarantees the fertility of the land, the natural pollination of several domestic species, the effective control of pests, etc. Trophodynamic regulation of biological populations is only possible by respecting the delicate networks established in nature. The imbalance in these relationships has already been shown to have important negative consequences.[29] This is even more evident with marine resources, where the majority of food sources consumed in the world are captured directly from the environment. The response to disturbances (natural or anthropogenic) takes place at a systemic level, through response pathways that tend to return to the initial equilibrium situation. However, human activities have increased dramatically in intensity, irremediably affecting the biological diversity of some ecosystems and in many cases violating this response capacity with catastrophic results.

Research suggests that a more diverse ecosystem is better able to withstand environmental stress and is therefore more productive. The loss of a species is likely to decrease the system's ability to maintain or recover from damage or disturbance. Like a species with high genetic diversity, a high biodiversity ecosystem may have more opportunities to adapt to environmental change. In other words: the more species an ecosystem comprises, the more likely it is that the ecosystem will be stable and resilient. The mechanisms underlying these effects are complex and hotly disputed. However, in recent years it has become clear that there really are ecological effects of biodiversity.

A high availability of resources in the environment favors greater biomass "Biomass (ecology)"), but also ecological dominance") and relatively nutrient-poor ecosystems frequently present greater diversity, something that is systematically true in aquatic ecosystems. Greater biodiversity allows an ecosystem to better resist large environmental changes, making it less vulnerable, more resilient "Resilience (ecology)") in that the state of the system depends on the interrelationships between species and the disappearance of any of them is less crucial for the stability of the whole than in ecosystems that are less diverse and more marked by dominance.

The economic aspect

For all humans, biodiversity is the first resource for daily life. An important aspect is crop diversity, which is also called agrobiodiversity.

Most people see biodiversity as a storehouse of resources useful for manufacturing food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. This concept of biological resources explains most of the fears of resource disappearance. However, it is also the origin of new conflicts over the division and appropriation of natural resources.

Some of the important economic items that biodiversity provides to humanity are:.

Ecologists and ecological activists were the first to insist on the economic aspect of protecting biological diversity.

The estimation of the value of biodiversity is a necessary prior condition to any discussion on the distribution of its riches. This value can be discriminated between use value (direct such as tourism or indirect such as pollination) and intrinsic value.

If biological resources represent an ecological interest for the community, their economic value is also increasing. New products are developed due to biotechnologies and new markets. For society, biodiversity is also a field of activity and profit. It requires an appropriate governance arrangement to determine how these resources will be used.

The current and future economic importance of most species has yet to be assessed. However, we must be aware that we still have a long way to go to know how to accurately calculate, not only the economic aspect but, much more importantly, the value that each species has for its ecosystem.

The demographic and economic expansion of the human species is generally considered to be setting in motion a mass extinction, of incomparably larger dimensions than any previous extinction. The specific causes are the indiscriminate disappearance of ecosystems, due to the felling of forests, soil degradation, environmental pollution, excessive hunting and fishing, etc. The scientific community generally judges that such extinction represents a threat to the biosphere's ability to support human life through various natural services and renewable resources.

Therefore, understanding cultural biodiversity in its relationship with ecosystems is key, as long as natural resources are not dissociated from their cultural, historical and geographical context.

The scientific aspect

Biodiversity is important since each species can give scientists a clue about the evolution of life. Furthermore, biodiversity helps science understand how the life process works and the role that each species has in ecosystems.

Parameters

Diversity is a phenomenological property that aims to express the variety of different elements. As a fundamental quality of our perception, we feel the need to quantify it. The development of a measure that allows biological diversity to be expressed in a clear and comparable manner presents difficulties and limitations. It is not simply about measuring a variation of one or several common elements, but rather about quantifying and weighing how many different elements or groups of elements exist. The existing diversity measures are therefore nothing more than quantitative or semi-quantitative models of a qualitative reality with very clear limits regarding their applications and scope. The development of a logical and coherent mathematical concept for modeling biological diversity at a specific and genetic level has been widely explored and presents a synthetic and robust body. The modeling of diversity at the ecosystem level is more recent, and has benefited from technological advances (such as GIS).[33]​ The simplest diversity measures consist of mathematical indices that express the amount of information and the degree of its organization. Basically the metric expressions of diversity take into account three aspects:

Each of these diversity indices is one-dimensional and of limited reading. Comparisons and assessments of biological diversity are necessarily incomplete in these terms. They are used due to their practical and synthetic nature, but insufficient compared to alternative multi-scale and multi-dimensional analytical models that better respond to specific conservation and management needs. Thus, two-dimensional modeling (richness and relative abundance) can be considered the “classical” standard for measuring and expressing diversity. According to the spatial scale at which biological diversity is measured, we speak of alpha diversity (punctual diversity, represented by α), beta (diversity between habitats, represented by β) and gamma (diversity at a regional scale, represented by γ). These terms were coined by Robert Whittaker in 1960 and are generally widely accepted.

Dynamic

Biodiversity is not static: it is a constantly evolving system, both in each species, as well as in each individual organism. A current species may have started one to four million years ago, and 99% of the species that have ever existed on Earth are extinct.

Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on earth. It is richest in the tropics, and as one approaches the polar regions larger populations and fewer species are found. The flora and fauna vary, depending on the climate, altitude, soil and the presence of other species.

Spatial units and biodiversity

The distribution of current biological diversity is the result of evolutionary, biogeographic and ecological processes over time since the appearance of life on earth. Its existence, conservation and evolution depends on the environmental factors that make it possible. Each species has specific environmental requirements without which it is not possible to survive. Although orographic and oceanographic, altitudinal and latitudinal changes allow us to define landscape units with a fair degree of approximation, the specific component of the species present is what ultimately allows us to identify relatively homogeneous areas in terms of the characteristics they present or offer for biological populations.

These biosphere units can be identified as biodiversity units according to different assessment criteria: for example, the number of endemisms, specific, ecosystemic or phylogenetic richness. Although it is common to argue that this or that country has certain biodiversity indices, the spatial units of biological diversity are by definition independent of geopolitical limits or barriers.

Two of the current spatial units of the biosphere, where the biodiversity factor precedes in importance, are the ecoregions of the Global 200[34]​ identified by the WWF and the biodiversity hot spots "Hot Spot (biodiversity)") or hotspots of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[35]​.

Global 200 identifies the most important ecoregions on the planet, both marine and continental—freshwater and terrestrial bodies—according to specific richness, the number of endemisms and conservation states.[36]​.

The term "biodiversity hotspot" was coined by Norman Myers in 1998 and identifies important terrestrial biogeographic regions according to the number of endemisms and the degree of threat to biodiversity.[37]​ In its latest review Conservation International proposes 34 hotspots.

El 80% de la biodiversidad mundial existe en territorios indígenas.

Sin embargo, la actividad y el estilo de vida de los países desarrollados fomenta una explotación del mundo natural que afecta tanto a los derechos humanos de estos pueblos como a la biodiversidad.[38]​.

Durante el siglo se ha venido observando la erosión cada vez más acelerada de la biodiversidad. Las estimaciones sobre las proporciones de la extinción son variadas, entre muy pocas y hasta 201 especies extintas por día, pero todos los científicos reconocen que la proporción de pérdida de especies es mayor que en cualquier época de la historia humana.

En el reino vegetal se estima que se encuentran amenazadas aproximadamente un 12,5 % de las especies actualmente conocidas. Todos están de acuerdo en que las pérdidas se deben a la actividad humana, incluyendo la destrucción directa de plantas y su hábitat.

Existe también una creciente preocupación por la introducción humana de especies exóticas en hábitats determinados, alterando la cadena trófica.[39]​.

El cambio climático juega un papel cada vez más significativo en la decadencia de la biodiversidad. Afecta a la salud de los ecosistemas alterando la distribución de plantas, animales, virus y los asentamientos humanos.[40]​.

Human activities aimed at development that can affect biodiversity

Some examples of development activities that may have the most significant negative consequences for biological diversity are:

Cultural biodiversity can meaningfully be added to the above. Work on biological biodiversity is incorporating the study, promotion and protection of cultural biodiversity, in addition to specific biodiversity, ecosystems and genetics.

Eugenio Reyes Naranjo[45] defines Cultural Biodiversity as diversity of knowledge that human beings have developed throughout history in their relationship with biodiversity.

This includes beliefs, myths, dreams, legends, language, scientific knowledge, psychological attitudes in the broadest possible sense, management, use, enjoyment and understanding of the natural environment.

It is about understanding biological evolution taking into account all aspects of human intervention.

Spain

In Spain, the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law is in force.[46]​.

The instruments for knowledge and planning of natural heritage and biodiversity are:[46]​.

In the conservation of biodiversity, it is concerned with:.

In relation to the sustainable use of natural heritage and biodiversity:.

Likewise, it also deals with the Ecological Restoration and Resilience Fund (FRER) (FCOJ).