What Happened To The Populations Of The Other Animals?
Animal populations worldwide have declined about seventy% in only l years, new written report says
It's impossible to deny — humans are destroying the natural surroundings at an unprecedented and alarming rate. According to a new report out Tuesday, beast populations have declined by such a staggering amount, that only an overhaul of the world's economic systems could mayhap reverse the harm.
Virtually 21,000 monitored populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, encompassing almost iv,400 species around the earth, have declined an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report 2020. Species in Latin America and the Caribbean, every bit well as global freshwater habitats, were unduly impacted, declining, on boilerplate, 94% and 84%, respectively.
Every 2 years, the World Wild animals Fund (WWF) releases its landmark study, revealing how far species populations take declined since 1970 — an of import marking for the overall health of ecosystems. The latest written report indicates that the rate populations are failing "signal a fundamentally broken relationship between humans and the natural world, the consequences of which — as demonstrated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — tin exist catastrophic."
"This report reminds us that we destroy the planet at our peril — because information technology is our abode," WWF U.Due south. president and CEO Carter Roberts said in a statement. "As humanity'southward footprint expands into once-wild places, we're devastating species populations. But nosotros're also exacerbating climate change and increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19. We cannot shield humanity from the impacts of environmental destruction. It's fourth dimension to restore our broken relationship with nature for the benefit of species and people alike."
Humans are to blame
The report blames humans lonely for the "dire" land of the planet. It points to the exponential growth of homo consumption, population, global merchandise and urbanization over the last fifty years as primal reasons for the unprecedented decline of World's resources — which information technology says the planet is incapable of replenishing.
The overuse of these finite resources by at least 56% has had a devastating upshot on biodiversity, which is crucial to sustaining human life on Earth. "It is like living off 1.56 Earths," Mathis Wackernagel, David Lin, Alessandro Galli and Laurel Hanscom from the Global Footprint Network said in the report.
The report points to land-employ change — in item, the destruction of habitats like rainforests for farming — as the fundamental driver for loss of biodiversity, accounting for more than one-half of the loss in Europe, Cardinal Asia, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Much of that land is being used foragriculture, which is responsible for 80% of global deforestation and makes up 70% of freshwater use. Using this much land requires a vast food system that releases 29% of global greenhouse gases, and the excessive amount of land and water that people are using has killed 70% of terrestrial biodiversity and 50% of freshwater biodiversity. Many species simply cannot survive nether the new conditions forced upon them when their habitats are altered past humans.
Devastation of ecosystems has threatened 1 million species — 500,000 animals and plants and 500,000 insects — with extinction, much of which can exist prevented with conservation and restoration efforts.
The food industry needs an overhaul
Where and how humans produce food is i of the biggest threats to nature, the report says. Much of the habitat loss and deforestation that occurs is driven by food product and consumption.
One-third of all terrestrial land is used for cropping and animal breeding. And of all the h2o withdrawn from bachelor freshwater resources, 75% is used for crops or livestock. If current habitats remain the same, researchers predict that cropland areas may have to be 10-25% larger in 2050 than in 2005, just to accommodate increased food demand. That increment is expected, despite more than 820 million people facingfood insecurity, indicating that much of the agricultural strain is being wasted.
Meanwhile, food loss and waste matter toll the U.S. $one trillion in economic costs, $700 billion in environmental costs and approximately $900 billion in social costs, co-ordinate to the report.
Around the world, an estimated one-third of all food produced for humans is lost or wasted — about ane.four billion tons every year. Nutrient waste is responsible for at least 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions — three times more than that from aviation — and nearly i-quarter of those emissions come from wasted food.
The role of climate change
Species overexploitation, invasive species and diseases and pollution are all considered threats to biodiversity, the report said. Withal, human-caused climate modify is projected to become as, or more important than, other drivers of biodiversity loss in the coming decades.
Climate change creates an ongoing destructive feedback loop in which the worsening climate leads to the decline in genetic variability, species richness and populations, and that loss of biodiversity adversely affects the climate. For example, deforestation leads to an excess of carbon dioxide in the temper, warming the planet and exacerbating forest fires.
Just a handful of countries — Russia, Canada, Brazil and Australia — comprise regions without a homo footprint. Only these wilderness areas are facing irreversible erosion, affecting other species and humans' ability to adjust to climate change.
According to the study, no part of the ocean is entirely unaffected by overfishing, pollution, coastal development and other human-acquired stressors. Humans depend on marine ecosystems to provide food, climate regulation, carbon storage and coastal protection — all of which are affected by these activities and are exacerbated past climatic change.
"These places are disappearing in forepart of our eyes," said James Watson, from the University of Queensland and WCS, Brooke Williams from the Academy of Queensland and Oscar Venter from the University of Northern British Columbia.
The link betwixt the health of the people and the planet
Between devastating wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has made information technology articulate that humans and nature have never been more intertwined. The written report shows that the natural back up for human life is chop-chop declining — and that it's upwards to citizens, governments and business leaders to come together at a scale never-before-seen to practice something about it.
Experts expressed concern that many of the major gains in human being wellness in the past 50 years — such every bit a decreased rate of child mortality and poverty and an increment in life expectancy — could be undone or even reversed due to loss of nature.
The charge per unit of infectious disease emergence has increased dramatically over the by 80 years — and about half of these diseases are continued to land-use change, agriculture and the food industry. One study cited by the study suggests that diseases originating in animals are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of affliction and nearly iii million deaths every year.
"How humanity chooses to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how information technology addresses the looming threats from global environmental alter, will influence the health of generations to come up," wrote Thomas Pienkowski and Sarah Whitmee of the University of Oxford.
What can exist washed?
Similarly to the economic crash in 2008, lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic take reduced humanity's demand by about 10% — a change that experts say is unlikely to concluding without major structural change.
While the report paints a tragic picture for the future of the natural world, it urges that current trends can exist flattened, and even reversed, with urgent action. It emphasizes the need for world leaders to overhaul the food production and consumption industries — taking deforestation completely out of supply chains and making merchandise more sustainable, among other things.
In but the last year alone, natural disasters, from California's wildfires to astringent droughts in Australia, have cost billions of dollars globally. Experts warn that economical decision-makers need to take into business relationship non only produced and human upper-case letter, only also natural capital when crafting public and private policy.
To feed ten billion people by 2050, humans will demand to adopt a healthier mode of eating — both for themselves and for the planet. Nutrition-related disease risk is the leading crusade of premature bloodshed globally and food production is the main driver of biodiversity loss and h2o pollution, too accounting for 20-thirty% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts recommend humans adopt a diet that consists of a counterbalanced proportion of whole grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans and pulses, with animal-derived products like fish, eggs, dairy and meat consumed in moderation.
The study calls the above changes "not-negotiable" to preserve human health, wealth and security and urges earth leaders gathering virtually for the U.Due north. Full general Assembly beginning September xv to address them — only then can humans "bend the curve" of biodiversity loss.
"While the trends are alarming, there is reason to remain optimistic," said WWF global chief scientist Rebecca Shaw. "Young generations are becoming acutely aware of the link between planetary wellness and their own futures, and they are demanding activity from our leaders. Nosotros must back up them in their fight for a just and sustainable planet."
Sophie Lewis
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Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/endangered-species-animal-population-decline-world-wildlife-fund-new-report/
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