Abstract
Climate change has created potential major threats to global biodiversity. The multiple components of climate change are projected to affect all pillars of biodiversity, from genes over species to biome level. Of particular concerns are “tipping points” where the exceedance of ecosystem thresholds will possibly lead to irreversible shifts of ecosystems and their functioning. As biodiversity underlies all goods and services provided by ecosystems that are crucial for human survival and wellbeing, this paper presents potential effects of climate change on biodiversity, its plausible impacts on human society as well as the setting in addressing a global crisis. Species affected by climate change may respond in three ways: change, move or die. Local species extinctions or a rapidly affected ecosystem as a whole respectively might move toward its particular “tipping point”, thereby probably depriving its services to human society and ending up in a global crisis. Urgent and appropriate actions within various scenarios of climate change impacts on biodiversity, especially in tropical regions, are needed to be considered. Foremost a multisectoral approach on biodiversity issues with broader policies, stringent strategies and programs at international, national and local levels is essential to meet the challenges of climate change impacts on biodiversity.
Highlights
Climate change poses major threats to biodiversity [1,2,3]
Global climate change has both direct and indirect effects on biological systems. Direct effects include those arising from increased temperature and increased CO2 levels associated with global climate change
Global estimates predict major losses of biodiversity due to global climate change, which are generally higher than current rates of loss and much higher than rates of species extinctions documented in fossil records [36]
Summary
Climate change poses major threats to biodiversity [1,2,3]. a certain variation of climate is compatible with the ecosystem survival and its function, the very rapid shift is detrimental to the variety of life. The multiple components of climate change i.e., temperature, rainfall, extreme events, CO2 concentrations and ocean dynamics are anticipated to affect all levels of biodiversity: gene-, species- and habitat-diversity. At a higher level of biodiversity, an altered climate could induce changes in vegetation communities that are projected to be large enough to affect biome integrity as a whole. The particular concerns are ―tipping points‖ where ecosystem thresholds will possibly lead to irreversible shifts in biomes. Such thresholds exist because of the ecological understanding of hysteresis as alternative states of ecosystems. Recent ―tipping points‖ analyses indicate that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations and climate change could lead to major biodiversity transformations. If beyond a possibility of adequate replacements, this interferes with the viability of natural capital stocks [20] and creating a possible crisis at a global scale
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