If you searched for “bioversity,” you’re most likely looking for information about biodiversity, the variety of all living things on Earth. It’s also possible you’re looking for Bioversity International, a research organization focused on agricultural biodiversity. This article covers both, starting with the broader concept.
Biodiversity: The Variety of Life
Biodiversity describes the full range of living organisms on our planet and the complex relationships between them. It operates on three distinct levels: genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity. Together, these three layers determine how resilient and productive the natural world is.
Genetic diversity refers to the variation in genes within a single species. It’s the reason not all wheat is identical, and it’s the foundation of modern agriculture. Generations of farmers have used genetic diversity to convert wild plants into productive crops, selecting traits suited to different climates, soils, and nutritional needs. When genetic diversity shrinks, a species becomes more vulnerable to disease and less able to adapt to environmental change.
Species diversity measures the number of different species in a given area. A tropical rainforest has far greater species diversity than a desert. Habitats rich in species tend to be more productive and more resistant to disruption. They support essential processes like pollination, nutrient cycling, and water retention.
Ecosystem diversity is the broadest level: the range of different habitats across a landscape or region. Rainforests, wetlands, coral reefs, grasslands, and mangrove swamps each function differently. Peatlands, for instance, filter water and absorb enormous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Losing any one type of ecosystem removes those unique services permanently.
Why Biodiversity Matters to People
More than 75% of global food crops depend on animal pollinators, a service worth an estimated $235 to $577 billion per year in agricultural output. The decline of bee populations alone threatens food security worldwide. Beyond pollination, biodiversity supports soil fertility, natural pest control, and water regulation, all of which keep farming systems productive without heavy intervention.
Over half of modern medicines trace their origins to natural sources. Antibiotics derived from fungi, painkillers extracted from plant compounds, and countless other treatments exist because of biological diversity among microorganisms, plants, and animals. Every species lost is a potential medicine that will never be discovered.
Biodiversity also acts as a buffer against infectious disease. Balanced ecosystems where no single species dominates help limit the spread of zoonotic diseases, the kind that jump from animals to humans. When ecosystems are degraded and that balance collapses, disease transmission risks rise.
The Economic Stakes
A World Economic Forum analysis of 163 industry sectors found that roughly $44 trillion in economic value, over half of global GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Industries with the highest dependence generate about $13 trillion (15% of global GDP), while moderately dependent industries account for another $31 trillion. Construction, agriculture, food processing, and beverage production rank among the sectors most exposed to risks from nature loss.
How Scientists Measure Biodiversity
Biodiversity measurement comes down to two components: richness and evenness. Richness is simply the number of different species in a given area. Evenness describes how equally those species are represented. A forest with 50 tree species but where one species makes up 90% of the trees is less diverse, in practical terms, than a forest where 50 species each account for roughly 2%.
Ecologists combine both components into diversity indices. The two most widely used are the Shannon index, which weighs both the number of species and how evenly they’re distributed, and the Simpson index, which emphasizes the probability that two randomly chosen individuals belong to different species. Higher values on these indices indicate greater biodiversity, and tracking them over time reveals whether an ecosystem is gaining or losing complexity.
Keystone Species and Ecosystem Stability
Some species have an outsized impact on the ecosystems they inhabit. These are called keystone species, organisms whose removal would dramatically reshape or even collapse an entire habitat. Their role can’t be filled by another species.
The classic example comes from ecologist Robert T. Paine’s work on Tatoosh Island in Washington state. When he removed a single species of sea star from a tidal plain, mussels quickly took over, crowding out algae, sea snails, limpets, and other organisms. Within a year, the area’s biodiversity was cut in half. Gray wolves in Yellowstone provide another example. Their presence influences where elk, bison, and rabbits feed and nest, which in turn affects vegetation growth, scavenger populations, and even river dynamics. Removing or reintroducing a single predator can ripple through an entire food web.
Current State of Global Biodiversity
The picture is not reassuring. Species are going extinct at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the natural background rate over the past 10 million years, and the pace is accelerating. Roughly 25% of assessed animal and plant groups are threatened. Out of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species on Earth (75% of which are insects), about 1 million face extinction, many within decades.
Some groups are hit harder than others. More than 40% of amphibian species are currently threatened. Almost a third of reef-forming corals and over a third of marine mammals face the same risk. The proportion of threatened insect species is harder to pin down, but current estimates put it around 10%, a staggering number given that insects make up the vast majority of animal life.
Five Main Drivers of Loss
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) identifies five dominant drivers of biodiversity decline, ranked by their global impact:
- Land and sea use change: Habitat conversion for agriculture, urban expansion, and infrastructure is the single biggest threat, affecting 82% of imperiled species in the United States alone.
- Climate change: Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and more extreme weather events threaten 72% of U.S. imperiled species and are reshaping ecosystems faster than many organisms can adapt.
- Invasive species: Non-native organisms introduced to new environments outcompete, prey on, or bring diseases to native species, affecting 52% of U.S. imperiled species.
- Pollution: Pesticides, plastics, nitrogen runoff, and industrial contaminants degrade habitats and poison wildlife.
- Overexploitation: Overfishing, poaching, and unsustainable harvesting push species past their ability to recover. For marine species specifically, overexploitation ranks as the top threat.
These drivers interact. Climate change makes habitat fragments less viable. Pollution weakens species already stressed by habitat loss. The cumulative effect is worse than any single driver alone.
Global Conservation Targets for 2030
In December 2022, nearly 200 countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Its headline commitment, often called “30 by 30,” calls for at least 30% of the world’s land, inland waters, and marine and coastal areas to be effectively conserved by 2030. A parallel target requires that at least 30% of degraded ecosystems be under active restoration by the same deadline. These goals recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities and aim for ecologically connected networks of protected areas rather than isolated patches.
Bioversity International: The Organization
If you were specifically searching for Bioversity International, it’s the world’s largest research organization dedicated to agricultural biodiversity. Its mission is to study how the diversity of crops, livestock, and farming systems can improve nutrition, livelihoods, and food production for people in poverty. The organization works across six focus areas: building the evidence base for agricultural biodiversity, conserving diversity in crops important to the poor, improving how gene banks and seed collections are maintained, protecting wild and forest species, fostering international collaboration, and monitoring trends in agricultural biodiversity over time. In rural Brazil, for example, women known as seed guardians preserve hundreds of plant varieties, including wild ancestors of modern crops, in community seed banks supported by organizations like Bioversity International. Since 2019, Bioversity International has operated as part of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, a partnership within the CGIAR research network.