Plants are the basis of life on Earth.
They trap the energy of the sun to generate oxygen and provide nourishment and other essential living requirements to almost all forms of life, including thousands of mammals, birds and millions of insects. The tremendous diversity of life on the planet is largely dependent on the diversity of plant species which sustains it. If the plants are lost, a huge proportion of the world s other living organisms will disappear too. The tremendous human cost of such a mass extinction would perhaps be even more daunting. In many parts of the world people are utterly dependent on plants for almost every aspect of their everyday lives.