The battle for biodiversity and human future

Biodiversity provides many benefits to people, including the production of food in agricultural ecosystems, the regulation of climate and flood, the biocontrol of pests, and diseases in many managed ecosystems. Global biodiversity is, however, undergoing rapid loss, and is predicted to face the sixth mass extinction driven by habitat destruction, climate change, species invasions, resource overexploitation, and environmental pollution, which are all caused by human activities. A pressing problem facing the world is: How are biodiversity and its habitats effectively protected to provide conditions and resources for human survival and achieve sustainable development? The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was wisely established in 2012 to cope with the rapid loss of global biodiversity. IPBES is expected to play an important role in global governance of biodiversity, and has indeed made much progress since its establishment, e.g., releasing several regional/global assessment reports on biodiversity. Unfortunately, a rift within IPBES emerged about the assessment methodology of biodiversity, which was recently reported in a Nature's News Feature. Traditionally, biodiversity has been assessed by an Ecosystem Service (ES) framework (e.g. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment), but the framework was questioned by the experts from IPBES on the ground that several elements related to biodiversity are not explicitly considered, including traditional knowledge, culture, indigenous people and biodiversity's negative contributions to people. With this regard, a Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) framework was proposed to assess biodiversity and its status through IPBES. The concept ecosystem service was coined in the 1980s, and is widely used in many different ways. Although the newly proposed NCP includes new elements, both ES and NCP frameworks are not exclusive. More importantly, the ES framework is well known to many different communities, and monetary values of biodiversity can be more easily accepted by the policymakers and stakeholders. If the newly proposed NCP is adopted, it must take time for the communities to get used to it. However, we cannot afford to wait for global actions to be taken simply because biodiversity is rapidly losing worldwide. This invited essay addresses the following three questions on biodiversity with reference to that News Feature. (1) Why a global policy platform (IPBES) is desperately needed to cope with the rapid loss of global biodiversity? (2) Why did the rift arise from the assessment of biodiversity within the platform? (3) How can the biodiversity on our planet be effectively protected to improve human well-being? Biodiversity needs more voices; IPBES needs the support from ecosystem services community; both sides of ES and NCP groups should listen to each other. Otherwise, we are facing the risk of losing sight of both groups' shared target-Protecting global biodiversity. We argue that no matter whether ES or NCP will gain the upper hand in this conflict, the real battle is to avoid the coming of the sixth mass extinction rather than adopt ES or NCP framework. China, as a rapidly developing country with the largest population, has implemented national strategies of the green development and ecological civilization to achieve the goal of sustainable development, which has helped to protect China's biodiversity and improve the ecosystems' health. China's experience tells that to effectively protect biodiversity, the ideal road map is to raise awareness, improve institutions and policies, and take actions against the rapid loss of global biodiversity, which is the only way to be kind to our current generation and worthy of future generations.