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that can negatively affect their health and vitality, reducing their capacity to provide a wide range

of ecosystem goods and services.
● Why biodiversity?

Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth, in all forms and at all levels, from genes to higher
animals, including humans and all species as yet unknown. Our dependence on biodiversity is
very high for all kinds of resources (food, medicine, fuel, shelter and recreation). For other
species, it provides nutrients, pollination, seed dispersal and reproductive success. Therefore, no
living thing could survive without biodiversity. According to the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), urgent action is needed to address biodiversity loss worldwide (Sayer et al. 2019).

Current global rates of species extinction are approximately three times higher than before
humans. Anthropogenic activities since 1500 have caused the extinction of 322 terrestrial
vertebrates, and populations of most of the remaining species have declined.

The risk of species loss is caused by multiple factors (habitat modification and fragmentation,
overexploitation, interactions with other species and climate change, among others). The loss of
a species in a forest causes the ecological processes linked to it to be lost; as a consequence,
the resilience of the community decreases and can lead to further species loss. The fragmentation
of terrestrial ecosystems by infrastructure and the emerging threat of climate change pose new

challenges for biodiversity conservation programs.
The essential elements of terrestrial ecosystems can effectively contribute to achieving the SDG
targets and presents SDG 15 as a suitable tool for integrating biodiversity into all policy and

administrative sectors.

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