All of us need plants. And, in the beginning of a new century, people everywhere are recognizing just how vital plants, wild and cultivated, are to human survival and development. The arguments for saving plants and plant diversity are simple — but worth repeating:
Plants — which literally harvest sunlight — are primary producers of the energy in all food chains. They enable animals and people to live. Plant communities, in other words vegetation, are the structural basis of the ecosystems that most animals and all people inhabit. Plants maintain the physical and chemical integrity of ecosystems.
Plants provide us with food, medicines, timber, fibre and a host of other everyday products that sustain and enhance human life. These products, together with the considerable trade in ornamental plants, comprise a major portion of the world economy.
Plants are a precious resource that require efficient, wise and sustainable management. Yet the genetic diversity between and within plant species is eroded each year.
Plants uplift and inspire us. Beautiful and steeped in myth and legend, they illuminate the rituals of birth, courtship, marriage and death.
Plants ultimately depend upon all of us for protection. We have a responsibility to save and enhance Earth's plants and plant communities. Who will care for them if we do not?
Plant conservation is an urgent task. Estimates vary as to the rate of loss of global and regional plant diversity, but it is fair to say that each year several species, variants or old crop cultivars — every single one of them possessing potential that has not been fully assessed — disappear without any chance of being replaced. Extinction is forever.
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