biodiversity preservation
Overharvesting, also known as overexploitation, occurs when a renewable resource is depleted to the point of no return causing threat to biodiversity preservation. Ecologists use the word to characterise populations harvested at an unsustainable rate, given their normal mortality and reproduction capacity rates. Wild medicinal herbs, grazing meadows, game animals, fish stocks, forests, and water aquifers are all examples of natural resources. Overharvesting for a long time can deplete a resource. It is one of the five major threats to world biodiversity preservation today, alongside pollution, introduced species, habitat fragmentation, and habitat loss.
To exist, all living organisms require resources. Overharvesting natural resources over long periods of time can deplete them to the point that they are unable to recover in a reasonable amount of time. Humans have always harvested food and other resources in need to existing; yet, historically, human populations were tiny, and collection methods were confined to small quantities. Many species are being exploited beyond sustainable development levels due to the exponential expansion in the human population, growing markets, increased demand, and improved access and capture techniques.
Effects of overharvesting
As previously stated, one of the highest risks to biodiversity preservation is prolonged overharvesting. Overharvesting can result in resource depletion, including population extinction and potentially the extinction of entire species. Overharvesting of the footstool palm (a wild palm tree native to Southeast Asia whose leaves are used for thatching and food wrapping) has resulted in decreased leaf size.
Overharvesting not only endangers the resource being collected, but it can also directly impact humans, such as reducing the biodiversity preservation needed for medical resources. Natural goods derived directly or indirectly from biological sources make up a considerable component of pharmaceuticals and medications. On the other hand, unregulated and unsuitable harvesting could result in overexploitation, ecological degradation, and biodiversity preservation loss, as well as a negative impact on the rights of the communities and states whose resources are taken.
The tragedy of the commons
Many species, particularly aquatic ones, are threatened by overharvesting. Common resources – or shared resources like fisheries – are vulnerable to an economic pressure known as “the tragedy of the commons,” in which basically no harvester has an incentive to practise restraint in collecting from a specific area because that harvester does not own that region. Overexploitation is a natural result of communal harvesting resources.
Most fisheries, for example, are administered as a shared resource even when the fishing zone is located within a country’s territorial seas; as a result, fishermen have little incentive to limit their harvesting, and technology allows them to overfish. In a few fisheries, the resource’s biological growth is smaller than the potential expansion of fishing income if that time and money were invested elsewhere. Economic factors will inevitably drive the population to extinction in these circumstances (for example, whales).
What Can Corporations Do?
Large and small businesses can assist in minimising overharvesting by “greening” their supply chain. Traditional supply-chain management approaches are given an environmental spin by “greening the supply chain.” Greening the supply chain is also an excellent way to address other threats to biodiversities, like habitat degradation and pollution.
Green supply chain activities can comprise several environmentally conscious initiatives that influence a company’s relations with its many suppliers, such as:
- Setting environmental criteria that all providers must meet.
- Developing performance targets, measurements, and scorecards for suppliers to track and evaluate their performance over time.
- Setting up a supplier-audit programme to ensure that suppliers have successfully implemented measures that reduce environmental consequences.
- Improving corporate operations to help the environment.
- Alternative materials with a reduced ecological footprint are being sought.
- Searching for novel ways to improve environmental performance in collaboration with government agencies, business groups, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).
Greening the supply chain is a proven cost-cutting method, as Dell Computer can attest. Dell hosts supplier-innovation conferences to generate fresh ideas for supply-chain improvements in various sectors. One supplier-innovation conference, for example, resulted in the suggestion that harmful coatings be removed from some of the company’s computers and replaced with a considerably safer film covering.
For certain of Dell’s corrugate boxes, another Dell supplier came up with the notion of combining straw grass with wood-based pulp. When compared to trees, straw grass is a more swiftly regenerated resource. In some places of China, straw grass is also burned as an agricultural waste product.
Dell isn’t the only one with this problem. Walmart reported in 2013 that it had saved $150 million in supply-chain sustainability measures in just one year. GM launched a reusable-container programme with its suppliers and was able to save $12 million in disposal costs while also minimising environmental effect. Using supply-chain management techniques like decreasing source materials and minimising and reusing packaging, Texas Instruments saves roughly $8 million each year.
As shown in the examples above, greening your supply chain can add real value to your business by lowering costs, driving innovation for new products and processes, improving customer and consumer perceptions, and assisting you in meeting or exceeding environmental regulations and performance targets.When it comes to preventing overharvesting, greening the supply chain isn’t the only method businesses use helping with biodiversity preservation. Some companies are using technology to help protect endangered wildlife from being hunted.
Cascade Effects
Overexploitation of animals can have cascading impacts, especially if an ecosystem’s apex predator is lost causing harm to biodiversity preservation. A substantial increase in their prey species could occur due to the demise of the top predator. In turn, the unchecked prey can then overexploit their own food resources until population numbers dwindle, possibly to the point of extinction.