Inconvenient ecological truths. A perspective on sustainability in the 21st Century

biochemically and store it in their tissues. These formed two different types which both increased diversity but are utilised in very different ways, one being herbaceous and graminaceous, the other, more permanent, ligneous; only trees in the latter group can evolve. The next evolutionary step produced the organisms which can only live by consuming plants or parts of plants and the energy stored in them. This second group consists of animals who feed in part on plants and in part on one another, which is even more effective in chemical terms. As a result, the principle of competition was further extended through behavioural patterns such as predation, hunting or capturing. Humans as biological beings belong to this second group.

Despite the evolutionary progress towards diversity, the bacteria with which everything began have maintained their dominance. Their biomass is probably almost as large as that of multi-cellular organisms.

Every higher developed being is dependent on their activities, be this in a positive or negative way. Together with fungi and specialised tiny animals, they process waste and corpses, create humus from them as the basis of soil fertility, or decompose them into their basic chemical components such as CO2, ammonium, nitrogen oxides and phosphates which then can be re-used in the economy of nature following the principle of recycling, though this is not a must – otherwise no fossil resource deposits would have been formed. Other bacteria or fungi are indispensable contributors to the metabolism of multi-cellular organisms or provide chemical elements for their metabolism, e.g. otherwise unusable atmospheric nitrogen. But bacteria (and the non-living viruses which frequently enter into life processes) may also cause excruciating ailments, worst diseases and mass mortality in all higher organisms and – although inseparable components of today’s highly-valued biodiversity! – are therefore feared, combated or reduced by all possible means. Who thinks about the fact that each cubic metre of air can contain as much as 10,000 fungal spores? Who is aware of the millions of – neutral, supportive or harmful – micro-organisms that can be found on and in every human body and who will consciously relate them to the ‘2010 International Year of Biodiversity’?

Inconvenient ecological truths III: misunderstood role of biodiversity 39