What it means to "maintain" biodiversity in our coastal marine environment

Abstract

The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) is fundamental to protecting and maintaining life on Earth. It arose out of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The global community affirmed the importance of biological diversity (“biodiversity”) for its own intrinsic value and for humanity’s sustainable use. The CBD defined biodiversity (at art 2) as: “[T]he variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.” The Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) and the The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy (February 2000) (NZBS) have similar definitions, but the Fisheries Act 1996 omitted the ecological complexes component. In part one, we identified that this inconsistency in statutory definitions is an important factor contributing to the unfolding biodiversity crisis in the marine environment. In this article, we focus on the definition of ecological complexes, and their crucial importance in maintaining biodiversity and ecological function, which are inextricably linked. This is because biodiversity is much broader than just the variety of life. We also consider the importance and necessity of intact ecological complexes for safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of ecosystems, and the abundant services that healthy ecosystems provide.