Man's impact on the biosphere is increasingly reducing the genetic resiliency of many species. Not only agricultural plant varieties, but also forest species, aquatic organisms, and certain types of animals and micro-organisms are affected. The full variety of microscopic organisms provides the indispensable link in the carbon and nitrogen cycles upon which all life depends: micro-organisms include bacteria, yeasts, molds, algae, protozoa, and viruses. The quality and flavour of man's food and drink often depends upon beneficial bacteria and fungi and industry uses micro-organisms to manufacture chemical products, including antibiotics. Micro-organisms help man to understand the underlying causes of many pathological conditions and pollutant organic wastes are rendered harmless by the use of bacteria.
The development, transforming and disrupting new areas for man's use is depleting or displacing valuable genetic resources. Wild species and primitive domesticates are lost. Areas in Asia, Latin America and Africa are threatened that have traditionally served as the 'centres of natural diversity' or the natural habitation of wild varieties and as the source of genetic resources for plant improvement. Indigenous crops are replaced by new higher yielding varieties of greater genetic uniformity and less adaptability to local conditions. Many plant characteristics, such as: protein quality, oils, unique growth habit, and dwarfness, may someday be required, but are being lost with the disappearance of wild species. The introduction by man of exotic diseases and insects poses a great risk to some of the world's gene resources. For example, the chestnut blight has wiped out all but scattered remnants of the American chestnut tree. Also threatened are the remnants of forest species whose populations, often critical for breeding, can be substantially reduced and sometimes eliminated.
The narrowing of the genetic base of many of the world's crops leaves them vulnerable to pests, diseases, and changes in soil and climate. Concurrent with this is the depletion of those genetic resources essential for both the reduction of that vulnerability as well as for the production of a large number of pharmaceutical and industrial products.
One species per day is being lost in these forests alone. Many species are losing sub-units such as races and populations, at a rate that greatly reduces their genetic variability. Even though these species are not being endangered in terms of their overall numbers, they are suffering a decline in their genetic stocks which leads to their having only a fraction of the genetic diversity they harboured only a few decades ago.
If present trends are not reversed, humanity may witness the elimination of one million of the planet's plant and animal species by the end of this century. This represents an irreversible loss of unique genetic materials. Such extinction means a loss of crucial ecological services such as the control of pests. Increasingly, species are contributing to agriculture, medicine, industry and energy.
2. Human beings consume, waste or divert 40% of the total biological productivity on earth. The world is being run as if it is a business being liquidated. All of its assets are being converted into bank accounts or microchips.