Saving Biodiversity: Diversifying Your Diet Can Stop Deforestation
In the fourth episode of our Beyond Medicine series, Eating Your Way to a Better World, we look at how eating meat and dairy affects biodiversity. Biodiversity means the variety of all living things and their interaction to each other and the environment. Living things include animals, birds, insects, plants, trees and other organisms.
Deforestation is the removal of forests. It is happening in many countries, leading to destruction of species and habitats, and accelerating extinction of various species. This makes ecosystems unstable or unbalanced, reducing resilience. This could further lead to soil erosion, landslides, flooding and destruction of human homes and habitats of other living beings.
In addition, there is loss of natural biological control in the ecosystem. Also, to add to the problem the fact that all the trees and shrubs that are cut down, die and their ability to store and use carbon dioxide as well as produce oxygen is destroyed. This increases the risk for global warming and climate change, as we saw in our previous post.
Deforestation mainly happens due to the skyrocketing demand for meat and dairy, either to directly graze cattle or to plant corn, soy or grains to feed the cattle to produce meat or dairy. Worldwide, the demand for meat and dairy keeps increasing. This leads to the increasing demand for arable land for grazing or planting crops to feed the animals reared for meat and dairy. Incidentally, if we use those crops to feed the humans, we may erase the hunger problem in the world.
Another issue is mono cropping. Instead of the varieties of trees, plants, flowers, medicinal herbs, shrubs, moss, and lichen that existed before deforestation, now we are planting a single crop at a time. The risk here is if there’s a bacteria or fungus that kills this crop – the whole field will be destroyed, as they are all the same species. Diversified ecosystems are more resilient.
Increasing dependence for meat and dairy is reflected in the increasing demand for not only land, but also water, energy, as well as continued deforestation. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to deforestation (insert reference), which in turn destroys biodiversity. Loss of biodiversity creates an unstable and unsustainable ecosystem, which leads to climate change.
By being mindful of what we have on our plate, we can reduce the demand for meat and dairy that in turn will reduce the demand for more deforestation and destruction of biodiversity.
Share with us your thoughts about how you support biodiversity, aside from eating more plant-based foods.
