One Million Species Moving to Extinction

A United Nations-backed report released this month has gotten a lot of media attention for its findings. The headline "The One Million Species Moving to Extinction" is not hyperbole and that number catches the eye of even those people who might not normally read or listen to a report on endangered species.

Here, I write about things threatened and endangered and, thankfully, less often about species that go extinct, but the report suggests that I could write a lot about extinctions on the global scale.

Up to one million plant and animal species face extinction, many within decades, because of human activities, says the report, said to be the most comprehensive one yet on the state of global ecosystems.

About 75% of the planet’s land and 66% of its ocean areas have been “significantly altered” by people, driven in large part by the production of food, according to the IPBES report, which will be released in full later this year. Crop and livestock operations currently co-opt more than 33% of Earth’s land surface and 75% of its freshwater resources.

Without drastic action to conserve habitats, the rate of species extinctions—already tens to hundreds of times higher than the average across the last ten million years—will only increase, according to a United Nations-backed panel, the International Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

I was surprised that they found that agriculture is one of the biggest threats to Earth’s ecosystems, especially in ecosystems that people depend on for food, clean water and a stable climate. The loss of species and habitats is as much a danger to life on Earth as climate change.

Nearly 150 authors from 50 nations worked for three years to compile the report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services — a panel with 132 member nations, including the United States. Representatives of each member nation signed off on the findings.

Without “transformative changes” to the world’s economic, social and political systems to address this crisis, the IPBES panel projects that major biodiversity losses will continue to 2050 and beyond.

Besides agriculture, other serious threats to nature are the exploitation of plants and animals through harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species.

The report also find inextricable links between biodiversity loss and climate change.

A 2 °C of warming above pre-industrial levels (which the world could breach in the next few decades unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced) would mean an estimated 5% of the planet’s species would be threatened with extinction by. Earth could lose 16% of its species if the average global temperature exceeds 4.3 °C. These losses would undermine global efforts to reduce poverty and hunger and promote more sustainable development.

The report is not without hope. The biodiversity crisis could be reversed with proactive environmental policies, the sustainable production of food and other resources and a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

SOURCES
scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-driving-one-million-species-to-extinction/

washingtonpost.com...one-million-species-face-extinction-un-panel-says-humans-will-suffer-result/