Mother Earth’s future is rooted in her plants

Sixty-six living species were deemed extinct in 2022, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In other planetary crisis news, the UN’s 2022 State of the Global Climate report for 2022 was “a chronicle of climate chaos.” While both of these data points are cause for serious concern, the year ended on a note of hope — in December, the UN Biodiversity Conference, known as COP 15, convened governments from around the world and culminated with about 190 countries agreeing to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and oceans by 2030.

While this commitment is significant, one key piece of the biodiversity puzzle still receives comparatively little attention: plants. Make no mistake: to have any hope of stopping the world’s precipitous decline in biodiversity while also combating climate change, the conservation and study of the world’s plant life must be a global priority in 2023.

All life on Earth depends on plants. In fact, plants are so fundamental that we take them for granted. This phenomenon even has a name: “plant awareness disparity,” a cognitive bias that means we don’t consciously notice the thousands of plants we encounter every day. But such oversight, en masse, has consequences: while the possible extinction of charismatic animal species rightly evokes heartbreak and galvanizes fundraising campaigns, people are typically far less concerned, or even conscious of, mass extinctions among plant species.

But botanical extinction events among flora are a major part of the global biodiversity crisis: about 40%, or two in five, of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction. If we are to address this crisis, we must support plant science as a matter of urgency.

Plant science, or botany, encompasses the study of plant growth, reproduction, evolution, discovery, and adaption, as well as their use for foods, fiber, fuel, and other purposes. Studying plants helps us to better understand the world around us and how nature itself can protect the environment for the long term. Plants and fungi help to restore damaged ecosystems, advance reforestation efforts, and support the conservation of animal species, including threatened species like bees that underpin the entire global food chain.

As the world’s population ticks ever upwards, plant science enables us to produce food more sustainably and move away from industrial farming practices that drive massive species and habitat loss. And through plant studies, researchers are even cultivating new kinds of plants that are better able to withstand heat and drought, tolerating environments damaged by climate change.

But despite their importance, plants aren’t getting the attention or funding they — and we — need. Fewer students today are studying botany, herbarium specimens, or plant diversity. According to the National Science Foundation, “the number of research universities offering botany degrees has dropped by half” since 1988. As a result, when universities and state legislatures face budget cuts, maintaining their herbaria becomes a low priority, even though this limits collections of plant species that botanists can use for genetic material. As researcher Sebastian Stroud writes, “botanists are disappearing, just when the world needs them most.”

This gap has the potential for a harmful domino effect: the loss of plant life in turn will accelerate climate change, global hunger, and even the likelihood of future pandemics, since research shows a correlation between infectious-disease outbreaks and the degradation of nature. In other words, while humans are healthier when our environment and biodiversity are healthy, the inverse is also true. And a flourishing environment isn’t just essential for human health — robust natural biodiversity helps reduce carbon emissions and cool the planet. Put simply, we cannot survive without plants.

COP 15 signified a crucial step towards combating global species loss. While the U.S. wasn’t officially one of the agreement’s signatories, President Biden’s commitment to essentially abide by the agreement is a much-needed resolution for the U.S. for the years ahead. But as countries roll out their specific action plans, we must make sure the conservation of plants gets the attention it needs, with healthy funding for botanical research and study.

At The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, I see firsthand how breakthroughs in plant science underpin real progress in environmental conservation — and how learning about plants inspires lifelong love for nature among our visitors. The keen attention to nature that I witness among our scientists and supporters is an inspiring recognition of the importance of plants to human flourishing.

Even though it’s still winter, we must not lose sight of the importance of plants. This doesn’t mean literally stopping to smell the flowers — but noticing and caring for the plants around us is a good start. Our future depends on it.