“Our local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on Earth differently.”
We have all heard of this B-word. But what exactly is biodiversity? How does it affect our lives and why should we care?
If you have pondered any of these questions, you are not alone. They were our ‘ignition switch’.
North Sulawesi, Indonesia
Lazio, Italy
Changes in any one part of this complex web of relationships can cause changes in other parts and in turn, how biodiversity functions.
Coral Triangle, East Timor
However, the biodiversity on Earth today is not only the result of 4.5B years of evolution. Human activities have dramatically disrupted and altered the natural course of development.
Manaus, Brazil
North Sulawesi, Indonesia
Lazio, Italy
Changes in any one part of this complex web of relationships can cause changes in other parts and in turn, how biodiversity functions.
Coral Triangle, Malaysia
However, the biodiversity on Earth today is not only the result of 4.5B years of evolution. Human activities have dramatically disrupted and altered the natural course of development.
Manaus, Brazil
Why is biodiversity vital for humanity?
Biodiversity’s role in our lives is indispensable.
Our dependence on it begins the day we are born. The array of services that biodiversity produces for human life is vast, palpable, and inimitable.
Explore four of biodiversity’s miracles.
Natural resources such as Native Spice plants produce goods and services that are vital for our existence including:
Ecosystems – such as forests, wetlands and ocean habitats – and the biodiversity in them – are natural carbon sinks.
They absorb and store 50% of greenhouse gases that are generated by human activities and that have harmful effects on our health and environments.
The scale of our dependency on Mother Nature is astonishing.
Biodiversity and its services contribute to more than 50% of the goods and services produced in our global economy.
From pharmaceuticals to agriculture, from food and beverage, to fisheries, there are more than 150 industries that rely on biodiversity for value creation.
From the Amazon to New Guinea, Borneo to Vancouver Island, rainforests are the ancestral homelands for over 1,000 indigenous communities.
These communities depend on the rainforests for health, sustenance and their spiritual and cultural identities.
Wayanad, Kerala
'Wayanad forests'
Sarah Welch, CC BY-SA 4.0 Via Wikipedia Commons
Wayanad, Kerala
'Twosome Monkeys'
Tanuja R Y, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wayanad, Kerala
'Junonia Amana (Peacock Pansy)'
Ajeeshkumar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
'Wayanad forests'
Sarah Welch, CC BY-SA 4.0 Via Wikipedia Commons
'Junonia Amana (Peacock Pansy) in Wayanad'
Ajeeshkumar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
'Twosome Monkeys in Wayanad'
Tanuja R Y, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
'Wayanad wildlife sanctuary'
Ram, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Human-induced biodiversity crisis, the root of Epula’s ‘why’.
House of Epula (Epula) was founded in response to the dangerous decline of our natural world’s biodiversity due to human activities and the resulting fallouts for humanity.
Human pursuits are – more than ever – rapidly eroding the health of ecosystems which all 8.2B of us critically depend on for our health, food security, livelihoods, and quality of life.
As you read this, every one of us is living through a sixth mass extinction: the first to be caused exclusively by humans.
The top 5 human-drivers of the raging biodiversity crisis on our home planet are:
Sabah, Malaysia
The increase in global temperatures and the resulting climate extremes is causing substantial damages and irreversible losses to humans and entire ecosystems across the world.
Krabi, Thailand
When lands are depleted of natural resources, they are less fertile, unable to support rich biodiversity, and more susceptible to pests and climate extremes.
Togolese Republic, West Africa
Produced by human activities, this pollutant’s damage to biodiversity has major ripple effects including making vegetation less nutritious, reducing harvests, and making crops more susceptible to diseases.
Uttar Pradesh, India
Sabah, Malaysia
The increase in global temperatures and the resulting climate extremes is causing substantial damages and irreversible losses to humans and entire ecosystems across the world.
Krabi, Thailand
When lands are depleted of natural resources, they are less fertile, unable to support rich biodiversity, and more susceptible to pests and climate extremes.
Togolese Republic, West Africa
Produced by human activities, this pollutant’s damage to biodiversity has major ripple effects including making vegetation less nutritious, reducing harvests, and making crops more susceptible to diseases.
Uttar Pradesh, India
Signs of the biodiversity crisis spilling over in the Spice and Seasoning industry are alarming.
Over 1, 200 Spice and Herb plants – vital sources of medicine and essential ingredients in food and beverages, preservatives, and beyond – face extinction or are endangered such as House of Epula’s Native Vanilla Pods.
Have you wondered: But how does this crisis really affect our lives? So did we.
Explore four impacts from biodiversity’s accelerating collapse in many regions of the globe.
The rate of plant and animal species extinction is at least hundreds of times faster than it has been on average over the past 10 million years.
The resulting biodiversity breakdown is drastically depleting Mother Nature’s capacity to deliver the goods and services essential for our existence.
In many world regions, this threat is affecting – access to clean air, fresh water, and sources of medicine; the pollination of crops; soil health and food production; and is placing millions of people at an increased risk of extreme weather events.
In 2024, the global average annual temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, for the first time. The need for nature-based solutions to climate change has never been more pressing.
However, irreplaceable ecosystems are turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources due to unabated human activities such as deforestation and sediment dumping.
More than 50% of Earth’s rainforests have already been lost. Only 36% of tropical rainforests remain intact. And 85% of wetlands have disappeared.
Invasive species are plants or animals that are introduced by human activties into areas where they are not native. When they spread, they destabilize local environments and cause detrimental impacts.
These include displacing native species, altering habitats, damaging food supplies and infrastructure, spreading diseases, and threatening livelihoods.
The more than 3, 500 invasive species have contributed to 60% of global extinctions and cost our global economy more than US$423B annually.
Nature’s dangerous decline poses significant risks to more than:
Since 2000, ‘biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse’ has risen to one of the top five economic risks in the World Economic Forum’s Annual Global Risk Reports.
Amazon Rainforest, Ecuador
'Janet Salazar Grefa, Woman Kichwa - Amazon'
Sergio Carranza Basantes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amazon Rainforest, Ecuador
'Janet Salazar Grefa, Woman Kichwa - Amazon'
Sergio Carranza Basantes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
House of Epula is participating in global action to reverse biodiversity’s course in under a decade.
On 19 December 2022, in Montreal, Canada, 188 governments – including Canada – adopted the most ambitious plan for biodiversity in human history.
The landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and restore ecosystems.
It includes 23 urgent targets to be achieved by 2030. Achieving them in less than the 6 years remaining demands a ‘whole-of-society, whole-of-economy’ approach.
Together with our farming partners and clients, Epula is directly delivering on targets for species recovery (Target 4) and sustaining wild species (Target 5).
4. Species recovery
click on image
5. Exploitation of species/ wild species harvesting, use, and trade
The 23 targets of the KMGBF
Adapted figure of 'Overview of the 23 targets of the KMGBF, Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy'
© Environment and Climate Change Canada
How does Epula’s quest realize global commitments for biodiversity?
Our contributions are specifically as a result of the particular ilk of farming partners we deliberately seek-out.
We collaborate only with small-holder farmers, co-operatives and processors committed to being guardians of biodiversity. They are pioneers, visionaries, and disruptors actively protecting and preserving their Native crops.
Epula and our clients
are fortifying farming ecosystems that span over 1,300 lives in 13 communities across 4 countries.
By providing our farming partners an economic channel for their Native Spices, one that some would not have otherwise, we:
Our farming partner in Veracruz, Mexico invests into research and technology to restore and preserve Mexico’s Native Vanilla Pod plant, Vanilla planifolia A. classified as Endangered by the IUCN1.
Our farming partners in Kerala, India and in Calabria, Italy innovate new conservation methods to increase the survival potential of their endemic Wayanadan Black Peppercorns and their regions’ Native Pepper varieties respectively.
All our farming partners ensure species survival and adaptation, and ecosystem stability through their conservation and sustainable farming and processing practices.
Our farming partners in Sicily, Italy and in Sulawesi Province, Indonesia ensure their Wild crops are harvested and traded at a rate within the bounds of the crops’ capacity for renewal and is safe for their communities, other species, and ecosystems.
The evidence is stark. We owe it to ourselves to act!
Biodiversity victories are emerging across the globe.
For Epula, the great task ahead is to build, strengthen, and sustain our interconnected community of clients, farming partners, and civil society collaborators so that together, we can widen our contribution to the 2030 targets faster than the intensification of the biodiversity crisis itself.
We are working relentlessly to make this happen.
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If you would like to be informed of our new Spice discoveries or when annual harvests of our Spices are arriving, please provide us your name and email address here.
By clicking on “Sign Up”, I agree to receive email updates from House of Epula. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Your privacy matters to us. We take great care to protect your personal information. Please read our promise to you in our Privacy Policy.
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