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Biodiversity: Sustainability

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Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

Synonyms

Biological diversity; Natural diversity

Definition/Description

The scientific concept of biodiversity refers to richness in variation among all living organisms at three levels: ecosystem diversity, species diversity, and genetic diversity (WCED 1987). According to WCED (1987), ecosystem diversity means variety of habitats, living communities, and ecological processes. Species diversity includes the number of species and number of individuals of each species in a particular location. Genetic diversity again means richness of the variety and range of genes within and between populations of organisms (WCED 1987).

In addition to these three dimensions, the fourth dimension is also mentioned. It is human cultural diversity (Chivian 2002; Heywood and Watson 1995). Cultural diversity means the ethical, spiritual, and cultural values (Callicott et al. 1999), driving forces and human influences, as well as the measures for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity (Heywood...

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Correspondence to Eila Jeronen .

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Jeronen, E. (2019). Biodiversity: Sustainability. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_901-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_901-1

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