Biodiversity loss could threaten food security and climate protection

A global analysis of more than 220,000 data points has revealed how biodiversity underpins essential ecosystem services from storing carbon and pollinating crops to controlling pests.

The global study, from the Department of Life Sciences and Kings College London has found that many of the benefits people receive from nature continue to increase as biodiversity increases, with some ecosystem services showing no clear point at which the benefits level off.

The research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, brings together evidence from over 400 studies across terrestrial, freshwater, marine and estuarine ecosystems, creating the largest global database of its kind. The researchers used the database to investigate how changes in biodiversity affect the ecosystem services that support human societies, and to forecast how future biodiversity loss could affect food production.

The findings suggest that biodiversity should be considered an essential part of strategies to address climate change and food security, rather than as a separate environmental concern.

"Everyone needs to eat, but everyone also needs to drink clean water and breathe clean air. By growing diverse ecosystems, we can take advantage of these benefits essentially for free." Dr Emma Moffett

Ecosystems provide a wide range of services that people depend on, including pollination, water purification, carbon storage and natural pest control.

The researchers found that many ecosystem services continued to improve as biodiversity increased, rather than reaching a ceiling after only a few species were present. Where a ceiling did occur, the level varied considerably between ecosystems.

Dr Will Pearse said: ‘We’ve known that biodiversity supports humanity by providing us with food, clean water, clean air, and so many other ecosystem services. But what this model gives us is a precise, global picture: we can now predict the benefits biodiversity provides anywhere, making it even easier to recognise and take advantage of those benefits.’

One of the most striking findings was the particularly strong relationship between marine biodiversity and ocean carbon storage. The results suggest that maintaining biodiversity in marine ecosystems could be especially important for the ability of oceans to absorb and store carbon. Critically, this was also the least-studied ecosystem service in the dataset, highlighting both the importance of collecting more data but also that there are likely many more benefits of biodiversity we have yet to discover.

A global picture of biodiversity and nature's benefits

The new database contains 222,829 data points from 423 studies, which is more than twice the size of the next-largest database of its kind. This scale allowed the researchers to compare the relationship between biodiversity and a broad range of ecosystem services using a consistent approach, across different habitats and parts of the world.

The analysis found that higher biodiversity generally enhanced ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and food production. However, the strength of the relationship varied depending on the ecosystem and the service being provided.

Some services appeared to depend particularly strongly on biodiversity, while others were more dependent on a small number of functionally important species.

Professor Guy Woodward said: ‘Every ecosystem is unique, making it difficult to measure exactly how much support each ecosystem gives us. A dataset of this size, shared publicly for everyone to benefit from, - lets us take account of all this variation and make accurate predictions’.

Forecasting the consequences

The researchers also used their database to explore how future changes in biodiversity could affect food and feed provision.

By combining their biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships with projections of future land use, climate and biodiversity change, they modelled how natural pest control could change under different development scenarios.

The forecasts suggest that countries experiencing rapid population growth and land-use change could face particularly strong declines in natural pest control. Parts of Asia, South America and North America are projected to experience declines under a fossil-fuel-driven development scenario compared with a more moderate development pathway.

Lower-income countries could be particularly vulnerable because of their greater dependence on nature's services.

Dr Emma Moffett said: ‘Everyone needs to eat, but everyone also needs to drink clean water and breathe clean air. By growing diverse ecosystems, we can take advantage of these benefits essentially for free.’

The researchers stress that the forecasts are intended to identify broad patterns and potential risks, rather than predict exactly what will happen in individual countries.

The team is making the database and model forecasts publicly available, allowing researchers and policymakers to explore how biodiversity contributes to different ecosystem services and how those relationships could change in the future.

The next stage of the research will focus on improving forecasts, particularly for marine and freshwater ecosystems, where the available evidence remains comparatively limited.

The work was supported by the Hitachi-Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions, a five-year research initiative between Hitachi Ltd, Hitachi Europe R&D and Imperial College London.

Running from 2022 to 2027, the Centre brings together academic and industry researchers to explore challenges including energy transitions, carbon capture and utilisation, ecosystem change and the financial mechanisms needed to support climate-aligned land use.

The study highlights the growing importance of understanding biodiversity not only as something to conserve for its own sake, but as a foundation for the natural systems that support human wellbeing and economies.

The researchers have also previously summarised their work in this area for policy makers in a Briefing Note -  Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function: A global analysis of trends’ .

Publication

The research, “From oceans to forests, biodiversity powers climate-regulating services,” was led by researchers from Imperial College London, King's College London and the Natural History Museum and is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.