SCI 11

• Exploring connections among nature, biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health and well-being: Opportunities to enhance health and biodiversity conservation
• The earth consists of four (4) spheres: the biosphere, which includes the air, water, and land where various living forms thrive; the cryosphere, which includes ice and snow; the hydrosphere, which includes water; and the lithosphere, which includes rocks and soil.
• A healthy ecosystem consists of various organisms engaged in complex sets of relationships between other living systems and its environment, producing various benefits termed ecosystem services.
• Ecosystem services include provisioning such as food, clean and fresh water, fuel, wood, etc.; regulating which regulate climate, disease, cleanliness, flood and other hazard controls; cultural or aesthetic which also includes spiritual, educational and recreational; and supporting which include nutrient cycling, production, etc.
• The first three ecosystem services directly benefit all living systems including humans while the supporting services are needed to ensure that the first three services are sustained.
• In 2001, various governments, private and non-government organizations, and scientists, worked together to conduct an integrated assessment of the status of ecosystems, the change it has undergone and the impact of such change for human well being.
• The assessment aimed at providing various governments and policy-makers options available to help them conserve ecosystems and ensure sustainability of ecosystem services for human survival.
• Ensuring sustainability of ecosystem services is crucial to human health and wellbeing.
• The final report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was released in 2005.
• Forests provide food, oxygen, carbon sinks, livelihood and other resources while wetlands ensure clean water safeguarding against water-borne infectious organisms.
• Mangroves protect coastal areas from storm surges while providing habitats for fishes and various marine resources.
• The microbiota in the gut contributes to nutrition by producing vitamins and aiding digestion and fermentation of food.
• The entire landscape produced by living systems provides a place for recreation, meditation, enhanced aesthetic aspirations and cultural identity – non-material benefits that is essential to psychological and mental wellbeing.
• Living systems are tightly connected to their physical and material environment, i.e., living systems and the abiotic systems depend on each other for survival such that perturbations in living systems will affect the material world; on the other hand, changes in the physical environment will also affect living systems.
• In addition, it was also determined that there was a 1.9% increase in dengue cases with every centimeter increase in weekly precipitation.
• Researchers found that the incidence of dengue fever increased 2.6% every week for every 1 o C increase in temperature starting at 20 o C and peaking at 32 o C.
• Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria while dengue is transmitted by various species (> 130 species) of mosquitoes worldwide.
• Climate change, deforestation and encroachment by a ballooning human population, has also affected migration patterns of birds and host transmission patterns such that birds, rodents and insects that are infected can move from natural habitats to open areas including human settlements, infecting other vertebrates and humans as well.
• Loss of chemical entities and genetic diversities that have the potential to cure ailments and health problems.
• The increasing temperature has seen an increased in the maximum and minimum temperatures by 0.36 o C and 1.0 o C, respectively in the last 60 years, has also enhanced the survival, and reproduction rate of vectors such as mosquitoes and other insects.
• Industrialization had and continues to have the following consequences: ecological consequences such as increase in total carbon emission due to burning fuels, acceleration of technological change that require new energy sources such as oil and increase in consumption of electricity, and emergence of the chemical industry that increases the level of pollutants in the ecosystem; socio-economic impact marked by market capitalism and strengthening of the system of manufacturing and induced massive urbanization resulting from mechanization of agriculture and population explosion.
• Rise in CO2 levels due to lower absorptive capacities of the forests, while enhanced decaying of organic matter left after the economically important parts are taken, and thawing of permafrost as well, further increase the levels of other green house gases such as methane; additionally diminished forests results in reduction of oxygen - producing benefits from the trees.
• Loss of biodiversity results in reduction in ecosystem services (nutritional food, clean water, etc.) that sustains life, including human lives.
• The current change in global temperatures or global warming has caused the emergence of new and re-emergence of previously-controlled diseases.
• In the Philippines, the incidence of leptospirosis has increased due to increased rodent population, exacerbated by flooding that dissolves infected urine affecting more people.
• Loss of biodiversity can alter or disrupt these provisioning services resulting in health effects.
• Traditionally, agricultural systems evolved as part of the tradition, beliefs, native technologies and myths of small communities.
• The figure below shows the interactions between biodiversity, ecosystem services, human well-being and drivers of change that indirectly or directly affect biodiversity.
• Clean water is provided by a complex interaction of living systems and the ecosystem and the hydrologic cycle.
• Crop diversification promotes sustainable agriculture while encouraging agro-system resilience and providing health benefits.
• A bio-diverse ecosystem provides good nutrition by delivering various choices or a mix of macro and micronutrients essential for growth, good health and well being of every organism in such an ecosystem.
• Ecosystems ensure proper provisioning services, particularly good nutrition and clean water, by deriving their food from other living systems such as plants that make food for organisms, usually animals, and other animals that predators prey on.
• The module consists of three other topics: provisioning services for good nutrition and food security, ecosystem services and human health and wellness, and aesthetic and cultural services and its impact on mental health.
• This module takes off from Module 8: “Biodiversity and threats thereto” and Module 9: “Sustainable development” and describes the impact of living systems and disruptions of ecosystems to human health and wellness.
• Agriculture is one of the major contributors to biodiversity loss.
• Man's ability to utilize and manipulate his environment, both biotic and abiotic systems, has resulted in disturbance to ecosystems and the biosphere to such a magnitude as to threaten his own health and well-being and ultimately his survival.
• At the end of this module, the student should be able to examine various ecosystem services in their community that benefits human health and wellness, evaluate ecosystem disruption to services specifically on provisioning, regulating and cultural services as it relates to human health and wellness, and assess changes in the environment and its impact on health and wellness, including nutrition, food security, and health using various global and local data.
• Provisioning services for good nutrition and food security are essential to human health and wellness.
• Current local agricultural practices have become incorporated into the global economy with landowners focusing more on so-called “cash crops” or commodities for export.
• People plant a variety of crops to ensure food supply throughout the year.