ABSTRACT
Biological diversity or biodiversity is the variety of life on earth. It is nature’s variety of plants, animals, micro-organisms, habitats and ecological systems, from the everyday to the highly endangered – from the blackbird and the urban park to the Sumatran tiger and tropical rainforest. The concept was placed firmly on the international agenda by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Article 2 of the convention formally defines biodiversity as:
The variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.
