Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, editors.

Abstract

Conserving biodiversity is a primary way to sustain healthy ecosystems and the services they provide, which we depend on for health, well-being and development. Over the past 50 years, however, we have changed ecosystems to an unprecedented degree, reducing biodiversity, and putting ecosystem services at risk. The United Nations, through its Millennium Development Goals, recognizes the need to reconcile conservation of biodiversity with the promotion of health and well-being because they are interdependent. Despite this recognition, biodiversity and health are generally not addressed in the same context.