Ecosystem services provide resources crucial to individuals and economies of all scales.

• A healthy ecosystem can provide available resources that may be gathered, such as water, edible and medicinal plants, animals and firewood.
• Having locally available resources contributes to a higher standard of living and reduced health problems.
• Preserving biodiversity is crucial for generating resources and income for many communities, particularly the rural poor.
• By adopting ecosystem-based sustainable agriculture, protecting, and restoring ecosystems, we can prevent poverty and improve the community’s financial stability. This approach can increase income and reduce vulnerability to economic shocks and environmental disasters.

Healthy crops are essential for food security and nutrition, and biodiversity is crucial to having healthy crops in the future.

• Crops are more resilient when they have a diversity of genes to allow them to adapt to changing conditions. Genetically modified crops have a very low amount of genetic diversity, and are susceptible to diseases, pests and the effects of changes in climate.
• Over one third of global food production depends at least in part on animal pollinators, which depend on multiple other ecosystem factors. This is just one of the many ecosystem functions that influence food availability.
• Preserving biodiversity contributes to food security, decreasing the likelihood of market fluctuations or failures.
• Companies may have control over the sale and usage of genetically modified organisms, giving them power over disadvantaged farmers.
• Many people depend on food gathered from local ecosystems.

Conserving habitat is crucial to the prevention and mitigation of the effects of climate change.

• Protecting carbon-sequestering ecosystems, such as forests, helps to slow global warming.
• Preserving a diversity of ecosystems, species and genes is crucial to adapting to climate change. As species go extinct or are extirpated, it is important to fill those ecological niches.
• Maintaining connected habitat patches is important to the conservation of many species, as they will need a corridor to migrate through as the climate changes.
• Climate action is a part of conservation efforts, as the changing climate puts many species at risk.

Protecting and restoring ecosystems is one of the targets of SDG 14.

• Marine species provide many of the same benefits as those that are terrestrial. Roughly half of earth’s oxygen production comes from oceanic plankton.
• A diversity of life ensures the survival and abundance of food resources, which are necessary for many communities, including small island nations which are at particular risk from the impacts of climate change.
• Marine and aquatic ecosystems are complex, and in many ways mysterious. With so many cryptic species, it is important to address threats proactively.
• The wonders and beauty of marine biodiversity have an intrinsic value.

Goal 15 explicitly includes preserving biodiversity.

• The abundance of life on earth depends on having a wide array of healthy ecosystems; losing just one type of environment could lead to the loss of species which depend on it.
• Ecosystem services provided by terrestrial species are some of the most accessible for human use. Being land animals ourselves, humans can farm and grow many resources, but not without the influence of other species (e.g., pollinators, decomposers in soil, etc.).
• The abiotic factors of land that impact our lives are heavily influenced by biotic factors. Trees and other vegetation protect the structure of our soil, the quality of our water and air and even the local temperature.
• There is intrinsic value to biodiverse earth ecosystems, which benefit not only physical health, but mental health as well.