Researches find threat from biodiversity loss equals climate change threat
The accelerating loss of plant and animal species around the planet is becoming as great a threat to global health and prosperity as climate change, concludes a newly published review of hundreds of research studies. "We should be just as worried about biodiversity loss," said Diane Srivastava, a University of British Columbia zoologist who helped write the paper, which appeared this week in the prestigious journal Nature. "One of the intents of this paper is to really demonstrate ... what the consequences will be of biodiversity loss and to point out that these are the same magnitude as climate change." The paper was commissioned as part of a special issue of the journal published in advance of a United Nations conference on sustainable development, to be held later this month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
