Biodiversity Quotes

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.

Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.

I can't imagine anything more important than air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity. These are the things that keep us alive.

Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.

Each species on our planet plays a role in the healthy functioning of natural ecosystems, on which humans depend.

Biodiversity starts in the distant past and it points toward the future.

We share this planet with many species. It is our responsibility to protect them, both for their sakes and our own.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.

Biodiversity is the greatest treasure we have... Its diminishment is to be prevented at all cost.

Uniformity is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way.

Every time we lose a species webreak a life chain which has evolved over 3.5 billion years.

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems – including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity – than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents.

Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?

Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man?

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour

Plant genetic resources are seldom 'raw materials'; they are the expression of the current wisdom of farmers who have played a highly significant role in the building up of the world's genetic resource base... As is already happening in my country, farmers and national genebanks in developing countries can work together to preserve and expand crop genetic diversity on behalf of all humanity.

Our food is safer and our diets are more diverse than ever before; production methods are becoming increasingly sustainable, clean and efficient; and we are constantly becoming better at protecting biodiversity.

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms - folded them into its genes - and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

We develop our beautiful planet in such a way that we brush aside the species... we risk creating a wasteland, where our aspirations will ultimately wither and die

Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind.

What little wilderness remains displays the patterns we must return to, if our species and as many others as now remain are to persist here a while. Ideally this would call for a broad cultural rapprochment with the wild, a long overdue armistice in civilization's war upon it.

An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.

A fist is more than the sum of its fingers.

The world is more than the sum of its suffering.

A painting is more than the sum of its parts

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

First thing the developer has to do is to get an assessment of the threatened species, of the ecological values of that site. At the moment, that developer lodges an application, there's usually trade-offs, negotiations, you end up with remnant bits of land. You might end up with some other offset land that the public has to run. There's no cohesive system of then making sure that we maintain and improve biodiversity values.

Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs.

Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work. Genetic engineers don't make new genes, they rearrange existing ones. Speaking as World Wildlife Fund Executive Vice President, stating the need to conserve biodiversity, even plants and animals having no immediate use, as a unique repository of genes for possible future biogengineering applications.

It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Through the art of personal development, we see an opportunity for these animals to inspire compassion, essentially creating a path to deep personal growth. This program [Animal sanctuary] will deploy ISF's youth development program, U Factor. The program helps youth identify their passion, cultivate their talent, amplify their purpose, and connect the younger generation to diminishing species and biodiversity.

And somehow mother nature manages to create this incredible biosphere, to create this incredibly rich environment of animals and plants with this amazingly small amount of data.

Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.

To survive, humans need food, water, and air. Yet biodiversity, the Earth's bodies of water, and the planet's atmosphere are all under threat.

If man has not found ways to deal with environmental problems such as water and air pollution by 1998, it will be too late. The future is not determined and it lies in our own hands.

When we protect the places where the processes of life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the essential conditions for peace and prosperity.

Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.

Food security is an authentically human requirement. Guaranteeing it for present and future generations also means safeguarding ourselves against the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. Indeed, the process of consumption and waste seems to overlook any concern for ... biodiversity, which is so important for agriculture.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.

Look closely at nature. Every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has survived. Who are we to destroy or even diminish biodiversity?

I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each.

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur.