Learners are likely to give the following type of reasons to justify their choice:
- Possible further impacts/additional effects e.g. natural disasters like flooding cause further damage and more loss of species
- Urgency or time factors/speed of change e.g. loss of medicines is only a possible problem in the future therefore not important in comparison to disasters now
- Degree of impact/seriousness/magnitude on biodiversity and natural world e.g. number of species affected
- Degree of impact on people e.g. starvation and lack of food kills people
- How many people/groups/countries are affected e.g. because so many people are affected by food shortages
- Increasing cycle of difficulty/spiral of decline e.g. deforestation causes global warming so trees are lost due to fires and flooding so there is more deforestation
- Opinion of experts e.g. scientific research suggests that this is the biggest threat
- How easy to solve e.g. once you have lost a species or habitat it is almost impossible to get it back
- Other reasonable response
Further guidance – learners may discuss any of the ‘consequence(s)’ from the right-hand column of Source A. Learners may use their own language to describe these consequences and develop the discussion using background knowledge and understanding, though this is not expected or necessary to gain full marks.
