Introductory Chapter: Biodiversity Conservation Levels and Approaches in Today’s Global Ecological Crisis

1. Introduction

Human society is part of the biosphere, the human race is just one of the many millions of species in the biosphere. The existence of humanity, and the functionality and sustainability of its society and economy depend on the ecosystem services provided by the rest of the biosphere [1]. These services ensure breathable air, self-purification of waters and soils, a climate system suitable for life, and food, but a significant part of the energy carriers and building materials are also the product of the past operation of the biosphere.

The biosphere’s state of health and its ability to provide services depend on the extent of the living communities of natural and near-natural habitats, their biomass, productivity, biological activity, and the high biodiversity that ensures their reliability and flexibility.

The global overpopulation of the human race has resulted in the shrinking of natural habitats, changes in land use and vegetation coverage, urbanization, and the growth of low-diversity agricultural areas, which on the one hand has led to a decrease in ecosystem services, a mass extinction wave of species, and on the other hand to additional problems resulting in a global ecological crisis, and climate change, which led to social and public health problems, socioeconomic dangers, and an increase in risks [2].

The transition to a sustainable society means the way out of the global ecological crisis [3, 4]. However, the sustainable society is currently not a real way of functioning, not an existing economic-social system, not a well-structured system of existing technologies and methods, but unfortunately only a slogan.

We know that in order to realize a sustainable global society, we need to achieve changes at several different organizational levels at the same time, and these are as follows:

• sustainable lifestyle of individuals and families

• the sustainable operation of institutions, companies, social organizations, churches, local governments, and their activities supporting a sustainable lifestyle of families.

• local-, regional-, continental-, and global-level legislation and law enforcement, concluding international conventions and establishing and strengthening international organizations that implement them, ensuring the legal and coordination conditions of a sustainable society.

We know that efforts to solve global problems during the transition to a sustainable information society must cover the following areas:

• Protecting the natural environment and habitats

• Maintaining the functionality and biodiversity of the biosphere

• Protection of the climate system and air quality

• Energy supply, and transition to renewables

• Water supply and protection of water resources

• Food supply and food safety

• Waste management and recycling

• Eliminate terrorism, organized crime, corrupt political systems, and war

• Fighting diseases (epidemics, environmental damage, civilizational damage)

• Eliminating poverty, reducing social differences, tensions, and aggression

• Ensuring social equality of opportunity and legal equality

• Modernization of education

• Boosting scientific research, operating knowledge transfer channels

• Ensuring democracy and operating its institutional system

Global problems can only be tackled through globally coordinated efforts. The institutional system performing macro-level coordination tasks for the creation of a future sustainable society must fulfill the following (today not yet fulfilled worldwide) functions:

• Operation of the joint legislation and expert decision support system.

• Ensuring global publicity of the comprehensive information necessary for decisions.

• Operation of the global democratic institution system of decision-making.

• Ensuring the implementation of the decisions made.

• Ensuring control and justice related to all of this.

• Enforcing the common global interests of humanity against local and group interests.

• Representing and embodying the unity of humanity as a whole.

The common goals to be achieved are obvious:

• Preservation and improvement of the biosphere’s effective self-regulation capacity and biodiversity.

• Creating, organizing, and operating a sustainable society.

• Promotion of scientific knowledge and technical development.

• The cultural, spiritual, and moral upliftment of humanity.

• Increasing people’s level of satisfaction (feeling of happiness).

• Possible success indicators can also be identified:

• The total biomass of the biosphere and its biological activity

• Biodiversity of the biosphere

• Self-regulating capacity, long-term sustainability, adaptability, flexibility, and defense capacity of the biosphere and human society as part of it.

• The ability of human society to create, develop, and preserve culture (science, art, knowledge transfer).

• Expected average lifespan of people at birth (physical and mental health, healthy environment).

• People’s average level of education, general education, and awareness.

• The possibility of developing individual talents.

• The average standard of living, quality of life.

2. The special tasks and response levels of biodiversity conservation

The process of the historical unfolding of the global ecological crisis, at different stages, necessitated nature conservation activities of different levels and types. As the problems worsen, the protection activities must also develop and adapt to new challenges. In this historical adaptation process, seven levels or eras can be identified. However, the newer approaches can be successful not instead of the older ones, but only in addition to them and based on them.

2.1 Passive in situ species protection

The reduction of habitats and the increase of human endangering activities first manifested themselves in the conspicuous decline of large, mainly predatory animals and old large trees. It is clear that the first reactions of nature conservation also aim to protect these endangered and rare species, primarily by limiting and prohibiting their deliberate and direct destruction (hunting, cutting, collecting, trading) in their natural habitat. This level of protection is still important and essential in case of large marine and terrestrial mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and rare plants as well.

2.2 Active in situ species protection

It soon became obvious that passive in situ species protection is not sufficient to deal with the problems in many cases, because the destruction of species and the reduction of their populations are not only caused by their direct destruction, but rather by the reduction of their life possibilities and their survival in critical periods. Their active protection in their own habitat can be served more efficiently by providing winter feeding places, summer watering holes, artificial nesting opportunities, and migration routes.

2.3 Active ex situ species protection

Unfortunately, it happened in more and more cases that both passive and active methods of in situ species protection failed, and the survival of some endangered species could no longer be ensured due to the disappearance or shrinking of their natural habitat. In such cases, as a last desperate attempt, the means of active ex situ species protection had to be and should be used, and the last specimens of endangered species had to be propagated under artificial conditions, in zoos, botanic gardens, preserved and maintained in special reserves, gene banks, and then reintroduced after the restoration of their habitat.

2.4 Passive in situ habitat protection

Already in the earliest times, it became obvious that the protection of species is most easily and effectively possible in their original natural habitat, together with their living community. This, in turn, means that the protection of non-endangered organisms and the protection of the association and ecosystem as a whole must be ensured in the habitat of protected organisms. The first national parks, nature reserves, biosphere reserves, and habitat protection programs were launched under this concept, but again, for the first time, only protection against direct human damage (logging, hunting) was implemented, and in many cases only partially.

2.5 Active in situ habitat protection

In large areas, a diverse mosaic of ecosystems in their natural state is capable of self-sustaining operation if the harmful human activity is excluded. In many cases, however, there is only the possibility of preserving a small piece of nature in smaller patches of habitat surrounded by human settlements and agricultural areas, where the natural self-sustaining mechanisms have already been damaged. The active management of such nature conservation areas is essential, as invasive species must be actively kept away, missing predators must be actively replaced by herbivore population control, the missed visits of grazing animals must be compensated for by mowing, forest fires must be curbed, or need to be maintained the dynamics of special communities by artificial controlled fires, water replacement may be necessary, etc.

2.6 Extended biodiversity protection

Nowadays, it has become clear that no matter how much we try to increase the number and extent of national parks, and to improve the quality of the professional work carried out in them, these efforts alone cannot effectively stop the decrease in biodiversity caused by human overpopulation and environmental pollution. Protection activities must also be extended to artificial ecosystems in the immediate vicinity of national parks and protected areas, by establishing buffer zones around protected areas, where agricultural activity should only be allowed in the form of chemical-free organic farming, the spread of urbanization must be stopped, and the establishment of mines and industrial areas must be limited, and the protection of biodiversity must also be ensured in settlement areas (by establishing parks, artificial lakes, green roofs, tree rows, lawn areas, and methods of active species protection). Extended biodiversity protection must cover the old varieties of cultivated plants and farm animals, traditional farming methods, and the traditional ecological knowledge of natural peoples, as well as the preservation of the spiritual and material memories of our cultural heritage. Efforts must be made to ensure that the culture and traditional lifestyle of natural peoples, which is in line with the approach of a sustainable society, can be preserved in its original form as our common treasure. All of these require a change of attitude in the field of tourism as well, and trophy hunting tourism can for example be replaced by ecotourism (as well as wildlife management for the purpose of nature conservation), which can be an important tool for spreading knowledge about nature and ethnography, and can be connected to nature photography, forest schools, etc. In the course of realizing a sustainable society, we must actually introduce the transition to environmentally friendly, sustainable farming not only in the buffer zones, but in the entire area of our planet, and the need for the general expansion of various methods of biodiversity protection.

2.7 Active ex situ habitat protection

The phenomenon of global climate change draws our attention to the fact that some long-term effects of human activity and natural processes make the work in national parks and their buffer zones and the general extension of biodiversity protection insufficient. Global climate change changes the boundaries of the climate zones suitable for individual ecosystems and communities [5, 6], shifts them in a polar or east-west direction, pushes the vertical zonation of mountains upwards, changes oceanic and continental effects, results in the transformation of local weather and groundwater conditions, the water flow of rivers, the water balance of lakes, the location and water level of seashores.

Instead of the currently prevailing “in situ conservation”, that is, the preservation of existing ecological conditions in current habitats, the goal of nature conservation can only be to preserve the functionality, self-regulating capacity and biological diversity of the biosphere. This can be achieved by preventing harmful anthropogenic effects and actively helping the natural adaptation processes of ecological systems (migration, migration routes, area change). In order to solve this problem, active nature conservation work in the nature of “eco-engineering” cannot be avoided. This work can basically be divided into two sub-tasks:

• promoting the creation of natural and close-to-natural communities of organisms that are suitable for (and adapted to) changing (i.e., future) climate of the given conservation area,

• providing an escape route for communities of organisms that currently and in the past live in the given area, but are unable to adapt to its changing ecological conditions due to climate change, if necessary through conscious plantings and the establishment of eco-corridors.

3. Financial issues

The broadening and deepening of active nature conservation interventions and scientific research work also raise financial issues. In this connection, the apparent interests of different human activities and sectors may conflict, which make it necessary to express the effects and consequences in monetary terms. The tools of ecological economics provide an opportunity for this. The monetary value of biosphere services per unit of time and area can be estimated or approximated using several approaches. From this point of view, the article by Costanza et al. published in Nature in 1997 should be highlighted, and since then there have been many further developers and critics [7]. Opponents of monetary valuation of natural capital and biosphere services are mostly afraid that this method of valuation suggests that the biosphere can be bought or its functions can be replaced with money. Of course, it is not about that, it’s just about using money as a general measure of value and “unit of measurement” to manage different habitat types and the importance and effects of their services in a way that is suitable for comparison.

Market-friendly solutions can be introduced based on the example of carbon dioxide emissions trading, which could play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Forest plantations for climate protection purposes, translocation projects for nature conservation purposes, the withdrawal of land from intensive cultivation, or the development of agriculture in accordance with ecological conditions, and the spread of ecotourism can be boosted with the help of these tools.