Biodiversity keeps us alive

In the picture you had visualised, neither humans nor animals are a waste
because reduced contact of humans with natural
environment and biodiversity adversely affects the human
commensal microbiota and its immunomodulatory capacity. Two dominant
socio-ecological trends, the loss of biodiversity and increasing incidence
of inflammatory diseases – are interconnected as immunological non-
communicable diseases such as allergies, diabetes and inflammatory bowel
diseases, were found increasingly common in recent decades especially in
urbanized communities.

The friendly microbes of the biosphere play an essential role in regulation of

human immune response because during biological evolution, we have in a
way outsourced many of the functions of our body to our microbiota which
trains human immune system throughout the life: organs constantly process
invasive particles as well as proteins and functional immune system
discriminates threatening particles from the harmless ones besides products
of one's own cells from foreign ones. Present populations of cities evidently
have marks of chronic inflammation as a result of weakening immune
defence.

When health benefits that are based on diverse nature are taken seriously,
cost savings may be major as was found in Finland in 2011 when total costs
of asthma and allergies for the Finnish society were 1,3—1,6 billion euros.
Finland tackled the public health problem by shifting the focus from curing
the symptoms to prevention, for example by emphasizing connection to
natural environment.

A very large number of species of plants is used for medicinal purposes such
as quinine, extracted from the cinchona tree (Cinchona calisaya and C.
officinalis) that is used to fight malaria and about 70 per cent of anti-cancer
drugs are derived from tropical forest plants. Biodiversity has a remarkable
role also in the textile fibres manufacturing industry, wood for building and for
the production of energy. Many industrial products are obtained thanks to
biodiversity: lubricants, perfumes, paper, waxes and rubber, are all obtained
from plants; and there are also products of animal origin such as wool, silk,
leather, hides, etc and additionally, healthy ecosystems clean our water, purify
our air, maintain our soil, regulate the climate, and recycle community waste.
In the United States, biodiversity provides $319 billion dollars in annual
benefits and $2,928 billion in annual benefits worldwide. An estimated $20
billion year is spent worldwide on pesticides. Yet, parasites and predators
existing in natural ecosystems provide an estimated 5-10 times this amount
of the pest control. Without the existence of natural enemies, crop losses by
pests in agriculture and forestry would be catastrophic. A diverse group of
microbes fix nitrogen from the atmosphere for use by crops and forests. An
estimated $7 billion of nitrogen is supplied to US agriculture each year by
nitrogen-fixing microbes and 90 million tons a year for use by agriculture
worldwide with a value of almost $50 billion.