ABSTRACT
This chapter defines biological diversity as including: two related concepts, genetic diversity and ecological diversity. Genetic diversity is the amount of genetic variability among individuals in a single species. Ecological diversity is the number of species in a community of organisms. During its emergence in the 1980s, the scientific field of conservation biology began to embrace biological diversity. Conservation biology was described as the ‘application of science to conservation problems’, aiming to ‘provide principles and tools for preserving biological diversity’. Conservation biology identified two major obstacles to ‘effective’ conservation: the fact that conservation itself was not incorporating the findings of ecology and biology, and that it was still regarded as an activity standing in opposition to the economy. Conservation biology was very much a project of Enlightenment. It regarded conservation and environmental protection in general as an activity to be governed by rational precepts that could be agreed upon with the assistance and reliance upon science.
