Climate Change and Biodiversity

At the global level, human activities have caused and will continue to cause a loss in biodiversity through, inter alta, land-use and land-cover change; soil and water pollution and degradation (including desertification), and air pollution; diversion of water to intensively managed ecosystems and urban systems; habitat fragmentation; selective exploitation of species; the introduction of non-native species; and stratospheric ozone depletion. The current rate of biodiversity loss is greater than the natural background rate of extinction. A critical questio for this Technical Paper is how much might climate change (natural or human-induced) enhance or inhibit these losses in biodiversity?