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Biodiversity is very essential for the health of biosphere and it provides the raw materials for man in order to make him adapt to the changing environment.
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Man derives many direct and indirect benefits from the living things. Biodiversity provides ecological services also. The uses of biodiversity are as follows.
Consumptive use value
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It includes food, medicine, fuel, fibre, timber, clothing, etc. 80,000 species are edible wild plant species. 90% of the crops have been domesticated from wild tropical plants. 75% of the world population depends upon plants for medicines.
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For instance, penicillin from a fungus name Penicillium, quinine from a plant namely, Cinchona, tetracycline from a bacterium and cancer-curing drugs like vinplastine and vinchristine from a plant namely, Catharanthus roseus (Nithyakalyani) are obtained.
Productive use value
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The products are commercially usable
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The wild gene resources are traded to introduce desirable traits in the crops and domesticated animals.
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Productive uses of biological resources are fuel, timber, musk, tusk, ivory, honey , fibre, gums, resins, medicines, silk, wool etc.
Social value
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Biodiversity in India is related to our religious, cultural and spiritual uses.
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Many plants like Tulsi, Pipal, Hibiscus and Datura are considered to be sacred.
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Peacock, cow, snake, bull and owl have a place in our spiritual areana.
Ethical value
- We must protect every life. It is based on the concept ‘Live and let live’
- We must enjoy watching all animals-Kangaroo, Giraffe, Zebra etc., though they are not useful to us directly. We should not cage birds for our pleasure and pastime.
Aesthetic value
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Biodiversity provides us a good deal for fun and recreation. This type of tourism is known as ecotourisum which generates 12 billion dollars as income per year.
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If we have a lion in a zero we get about Rs . 2 crores as income per year. But if we kill the lion we get only Rs. 50,000/-
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A teak fetches Rs. 50,000/- if cut down; but it lives, its value is priceless by way of its ecological role.
Option values or unknown benefits
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We must try to explore the potentials of biodiversity for future benefit of mankind. We must protect the biodiversity in order to find out drugs to fight diseases like cancer and AIDS.
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