Like water, air and soil, biological diversity is the hub of the wheel of life. Destroy it, and the wheel, however technologically sophisticated, will no longer run"
(Anonymous)

Life - as far as we know, is the unique aspect of our planet in the solar system if not the entire universe. Biodiversity is the variety of life in all its forms, levels and combinations and includes plants, animals, microorganisms and ecosystems. This variety is responsible for the building blocks to adapt to changing environmental conditions in the future.

It appears that the term of biological diversity was first defined as including two related concept, genetic diversity (the amount of genetic variability within species) and ecological diversity (the number of species in a community of organism) by Norse and McManus (1980).

The contracted form of biological diversity 'Biodiversity' was apparently coined by Walter G. Rosen in 1985 for the first planning meeting of the 'National Forum on Biodiversity' held in Washington DC in September 1986, the proceeding of which (Wilson and Peter 1998) brought the notion of biodiversity to the attention of a wide feild of scientists and others. Other wide ranging surveys of the field were published by Reid and Miller (1989), McNeey et al. (1990) and Pined et al. (1991) (in UNEP, 1995:5).

The concept of species diversity (variety of species whether wild or domesticated within a geographical area) was later included at the Convention on Biological Diversity.