Letter from the President: Biodiversity and the Smallest Floral Kingdom

Authors

Andrew N. Rowan, WellBeing InternationalFollow
Kathleen Rowan, WellBeing InterntionalFollow

Abstract

As attention to global biodiversity heats up because of the upcoming December meeting (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, media stories on the state of the globe’s biodiversity are becoming more numerous. Humans love lists, and someone would inevitably produce a list of countries ranked according to their biodiversity. Swiftest, a data analytics company interested in the insurance and travel industries, has recently created a country-by-country biodiversity ranking. Their list includes 201 countries (193 member countries in the UN). The list is based on a relatively simple index that counts all the species of five groups of animals – birds, amphibians, fish, mammals, and reptiles – as well as the number of plant species. Each country’s score is determined on a 0-100 scale based on the total number of each of the five animal groups, with a 0-50 scale for plants. The highest possible score is, therefore, 550. Brazil ends up on top of the list with a total score of 512.34 (a result that is not that surprising given the species richness of the Amazon basin), while San Marino (a tiny country of 61 km² located in Italy) is at the bottom with a score of 5.47.

Recommended Citation

Rowan, Andrew N. and Rowan, Kathleen (2022) "Letter from the President: Biodiversity and the Smallest Floral Kingdom," WellBeing News: Vol. 4: Iss. 8, Article 1.
Available at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/wbn/vol4/iss8/1