BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES BY BABATUNDE ABDULHAKIM.

BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES 

                 By 

BABATUNDE ABDULHAKIM

         09036619960

Biodiversity is the wealth of life found on earth, that describes nature's variety including plants and animals species. It has several components such as landscape, spatial distribution, genes, number of abundance, ecosystem, Forest, games reserve,National parks and Habitats.

  Biodiversity is a nebulous concept to defined. Despite its ill-defined, Scholars subscribe to different definitions due to its vastness and modification it had undergoes.

    Pie-Lou(1977) defined "Biodiversity as number of species in an area and their relative abundance.

    Gaston(1966) viewed "Biodiversity as variety of all form of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystem. He further categorized biodiversity into three main types:

1- Genetic Diversity

2- Species Diversity 

3- Ecosystem Diversity 

    Conservation is defined as the protection of natural environment.

    In recent years, a great deal of interest has surfaces the potentials facing biodiversity conservation and National development in the world.

 The pride of any government is the attainment of higher value of level of development in such a way to derive its biodiversity attachment.

   National development as a concept is a victim of of definitional pluralism. It is a difficult word to define. However, attempts were made by different scholars on their views to the word.

    Naomi(1995) captures National development is usually taken to involve not only economic growth,but some notions of equitable distribution,provision, and other essential services to improve individual and collective quality of life.

   Gboyega(2003) views National development of a socio-economics, political, religious, biodiversity of a county or Nation. He further explains that this is only achieved through development planning.

   Biodiversity conservation and national development is appreciated and valued by individual and collective in the world especially Africa. The Nation's biodiversity constitutes the source of of food, raw materials, agriculture, Domestic and genetic materials, cultural values. It provides ecosystem services that improve the value of life. The potential, values of biodiversity is closely linked to the range of various ecosystem. Some of the areas which biodiversity conservation is valued and its potentials include;

AGRICULTURE 

   Biodiversity in forest, Savannah woodlands and mangroves make significant contribution in the world especially Africa. Nigeria as a nation depends largely on biodiversity resources for food supplies and supplements.

   Biodiversity supports 70-80% of food requirements of rural places in the world while about 50-60% of urban communities depend on biodiversity for their nutritional support.

   Various types of food and agricultural products were sourced from biodiversity which includes; Bush meats, snails, fish, wild fruits and host of others. The uniqueness of nutritional support from biodiversity in the world lies in the broad-based ecosystem and places a potentials across the length and breadth of the World.

PUBLIC HEALTH AND TRADITIONAL MEDICINE 

  Biodiversity conservation has supported the health needs of million of people in the world. However, in the past two decades, the traditional medicine was given proper attention. Virtually, every communities have huge collection of plants and animals for treating different diseases which make the number of people relying on herbs, wildlife increases. 

Effort are now being made in different parts of the world to domesticate some of these medicinal plants. A trending examples of this is the production of herbs made from plants in Madagascar over the pandemic of corona virus.

      Apart from the direct use of biodiversity for traditional medicine, the maintenance of environmental health and sanitation is also an ecosystem service performed by biodiversity through biological composer.