How losing biodiversity could be killing us

Antibiotics, pain killers and even treatments for cancer – many are derived from nature. But we are killing off the species that could provide the next nature-based cure. How bad is biodiversity loss for our health?

Credits:
Reporter: Louise Osborne
Camera: Henning Goll
Video Editor: Markus Mörtz
Supervising Editors: Michael Trobridge, Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann, Kiyo Dörrer

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

#PlanetA #Biodiversity #Health

Read more:

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:

The biodiversity crisis is a business crisis:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:40 Discovering penicillin
02:05 Disappearing biodiversity
03:57 Healthy planet, healthy humans
06:51 Saving biodiversity
08:56 Conclusion

[DWPlanetA]

How important is the natural world to you and your health?

[enatp]

Very glad that this subject is being named and covered. This needs to be mandatory education in elementary and high school years. I didn't learn this until university and not everyone can or wants to go to university and even when they do, they'd have to choose natural science courses.

[terramater]

That's such an important topic! Biodiversity is key! Our crew filmed a super important climate hero: Whales! These marine giants, like filter-feeding baleen and sperm whales, stockpile tonnes of carbon in their bodies, equivalent to 1, 500 trees each. When they die, their carcasses sink to the bottom of the sea, taking the carbon with them out of the atmospheric cycle. But that's not all; they also contribute to the growth of plankton, which captures 40% of all CO2 produced worldwide. And to really understand that in financial terms, 2e talked to an economist that told us the real value of a whale. Without whales, the ocean dies, and without the ocean, we die!

[fredericoamigo]

Thank you so much for this! It's imperative that more people are exposed to this enormous problem. I like that you also highlight a few solutions to the problem, rather than just focusing on the problem - this is important to inspire and motivate people to actually take action.

[dieallgemeinheit]

It might be a tidbit worth noticing that the term drug is one that used to mean dried or condensed plant parts (dried leaves to milk of poppy) - not relevant, but nice to know :)

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Biodiversity was something I never heard of before I started researching topics for my channel…but it truly pops up constantly for all environmental topics!

Roads using more space than train tracks? Loss of land space and the associate biodiversity. Excessive use of fertilizers in Ag? Loss of helpful insect biodiversity. Urban sprawl? Loss of crucial marshland and other areas rich with biodiversity. Eating meat vs protein rich plants? Extra space usage leads to more biodiversity loss.

We really do need to make a ton of changes all throughout our society in order to solve this! Luckily, the scientific community has loads of data saying exactly what those changes need to be!

[agustinussiahaan]

Churches must educate all their priests to really understand the urgency of this problem.
I have encouraged my local church congregation to avoid using disposable plastic cups or bottles or plates in all kinds of services. But this idea has no appreciation. They think this is just a joke. Because God always protects us.

[joeblack]

I cannot even imagine what life must be like for people who are not aware of the importance of biodiversity. It sometimes sounds like a joke to me that there might be people so unaware, but then I realise it would explain perfectly why things are going to hell so quickly.

[astaridjatmiko]

Indonesia has lost so many endemic animals and plants 😢 We have varieties of birds but people caught them and kept them in cages. If it's not because of hunting, they're just loosing habitats.

[wowJhil]

Why is the closing remarks and actually the whole video so human oriented? We have to protect biodiversity to secure our survival (or for the beauty of biodiversity as said in the end). This is kinda crazy, that we don't once say that we should do this for the other living beings on the planet! Most of all, we own it to the other ones.

[urosmilosevic]

Please keep spreading these important messages! Love from Serbia

[lightbringer]

Human agriculture would have a much smaller impact if we gave up animal husbandry. 80% of all big crops are grown to feed livestock. Livestock also uses huge areas to graze. All so people can eat a hamburger. There are alternatives to all the animal products that provide 100% of the nutrition a human needs. Turn half the land back to the wild forests.

[boombot]

Thank❤🌹🙏 you dear DW Planet A team! Great👍👏🌹 episode! 🥀🌏🌍🌎🌹

[tarmotyyri]

I'm afraid there's nothing stopping mankind committing a slow, but certain, suicide & taking other life forms with us.

[jamesngo]

I’ve never thought the extinction of some species could damage us 😢

[stargazeronesixseven]

🙏 Thank You So Much DW Planet-A channel for this important tutorial to illuminate us of our wrong ways of doing things that destroying our precious flora, fauna, the planet Earth & ourselves & what we can do to get us out of these mess! 🙏🕯🌷🌿🌎💜🕊

[chriswatt]

a healthy biodiversity is of the utmost importance. it needs to be a top priority. sadly, far too many believe they can disregard it and still benefit from it. it won't last.

[GroundhogzGarage]

8 billion people require a lot of resources.

[chrilin]

Biodiversity isn't just important because of human health or other human centric reasons, we don't have the right to threaten or eradicate other life on our shared planet.

[mosinM-song]

theres so many people our planet can hold, you can only slow this down with painstaking effort until the animals die off from human overpopulation, we are an invasive species for every ecosystem nowadays