UN Biodiversity Chief: Humans Risk Living in an 'Empty World' With 'Catastrophic' Consequences
20 January
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Logging state in the U.S. is seen representing some of the consequences humans will face in the absence of concrete action to stop deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis. Mark Newman / Lonely Planet Images / Getty Images
Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems, as The Guardian reported.
<p><a href="https://www.cbd.int/secretariat/executive-secretary/" target="_blank">Acting Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema</a> warned that the absence of concrete action to stop <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" rel="noopener noreferrer">deforestation</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pollution" rel="noopener noreferrer">pollution</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis</a> will mean that humanity has given up on the planet. </p>
<p>Mrema who grew up in Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro has seen the streams near her childhood home dry up, turning a fertile forest into bare land, she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>Her stark assessment of an empty world came just ahead of the Davos World Economic Forum, which starts on Wednesday. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/davos-thunberg-trump-climate-change-2644863489.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis is expected</a> to take center stage.</p>
<p>The World Economic Forum said this year that climate-related risks overshadow all other risks, and it placed loss of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" rel="noopener noreferrer">biodiversity</a> as the third biggest risk to the world, ahead of infectious diseases, terrorism and war between countries. It was only outranked by other climate-related threats, with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" rel="noopener noreferrer">extreme weather</a> as the top threat, followed by a failure to adapt and mitigate the climate crisis, according to the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/what-s-missing-from-the-2020-global-risks-report/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</p>
<p>"For the first time in the history of the Global Risks Perception Survey, environmental concerns dominate the top long-term risks by likelihood among members of the World Economic Forum's multistakeholder community," according to the executive summary of the Forum's <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-report-2020/executive-summary/" target="_blank">2020 Global Risks Report</a>. </p>
<p>Mrema is tasked with creating an international agreement to protect nature on the scale of the 2015 <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris agreement</a>. She noted in urgency that the disappearance of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-reefs" rel="noopener noreferrer">coral reefs</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rainforests" rel="noopener noreferrer">rainforests</a> and other life supporting ecosystems will lead to an "empty world" and have "catastrophic" consequences for societies, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>"People's lives depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately depends on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food sources. All these are prerequisites for human health and livelihoods," she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a> in an exclusive interview. </p>
<p>Scientists have warned that human-activity is fueling the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sixth-mass-extinction" rel="noopener noreferrer">sixth mass extinction</a> in history as animals and plants are disappearing at rates tens to hundreds of times faster than at any point in the last 10 million years. In fact, researchers predict that nearly 1,000 species will be lost over the next century and animal size will decrease 25 percent, as conditions favor smaller more adaptable animals, according to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-shrinking-animals-2638682794.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">EcoWatch</a>. </p>
<p>In October, governments will meet in China to formalize an agreement on protecting biodiversity. The draft proposal released last week calls for a modest commitment to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/un-biodiversity-sixth-mass-extinction-2644807009.html?rebelltitem=1">protect at least 30 percent of the planet</a>, controlling invasive species and reducing pollution from plastic waste, according to the draft from the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020/wg2020-02/documents" target="_blank">Convention on Biological Diversity</a>, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p>
<p>Mrema told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> she hopes the attendees will negotiate a more rigorous and ambitious agreement. However, if this modest one fails, the consequences will be dire.</p>
<p>"The risks will be major," she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a>. "One is that we will not have listened to the science and the evidence provided. Because we will not have listened, it means the global community will have said: let biodiversity loss continue, let people continue to die, let the degradation continue, deforestation continue, pollution continue, and we'll have given up as an international community to save the planet. I hope that's not where any of us would want to be."</p>
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Giraffes in the Serengeti. Harvey Barrison / CC BY-SA 2.0
The United Nations wants to stop the sixth mass extinction.
<p>In a <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/efb0/1f84/a892b98d2982a829962b6371/wg2020-02-03-en.pdf" target="_blank">draft proposal</a> released Monday, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity proposed protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/14/world/un-biodiversity-draft-plan-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html" target="_blank">CNN reported</a>.</p><p>"If adopted, this target could achieve what our children have been calling on governments to do – listen to the science," explorer-in-residence at National Geographic Enric Sala told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/un-draft-plan-sets-2030-target-to-avert-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. "If we are to stay below 1.5C (34.7F), prevent the extinction of 1 million species and the collapse of our life support system, we need to protect our intact wilderness, and ensure at least 30% of our land and oceans are protected by 2030."</p>
<div id="b07c7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="KJUANF1579008644"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1216507109690441729" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">JUST RELEASED‼️ 'Zero Draft' of the #post2020 global biodiversity framework
Get your first look at the text that w… https://t.co/5zZI598CcE</div> — UN Biodiversity (@UN Biodiversity)<a href="https://twitter.com/UNBiodiversity/statuses/1216507109690441729">1578872871.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The protection of vulnerable ecosystems is only one of a 20-part plan to address <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> loss this decade, with the hope of enabling ecosystems to recover by 2050, CNN explained.</p><p>Other 2030 goals include:</p><ul><li>Reducing the introduction rate of invasive species by 50 percent and reducing their impact in 50 percent of the places they are already present</li><li>Reducing nutrient, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pesticides" target="_self">pesticide</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastic-pollution" target="_self">plastic pollution</a> by at least 50 percent</li><li>Making sure the human use and trade of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> is sustainable and legal</li><li>Using nature-based solutions to mitigate and adapt to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> to achieve 30 percent of the carbon-dioxide reductions required by the Paris agreement</li></ul><p>The draft is set to be adopted by world leaders at an October summit in Kunming, China, The Guardian explained. However, it follows a similar agreement reached in Aichi, Japan in 2010 that most countries failed to meet.</p>
<p>The draft comes a little more than six months after a UN study issued a dire warning about the state of the earth's biodiversity, finding <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/biodiversity-report-ignored-2638037822.html" target="_self">that one million species</a> could go extinct. The situation has been made even more urgent by the devastating wildfires in Australia, which have <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-wildfire-deaths-2644394434.html" target="_self">killed more than one billion animals</a>, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/united-nations-draft-biodiversity-framework_n_5e1c8ecbc5b6da971d19f17d?ri18n=true" target="_blank">HuffPost pointed out</a>. Because of this, some environmental groups think the draft proposal does not go far enough.</p><p>"We are witnessing whole swaths of a continent burning ― devastating entire species before our eyes ― and the need for dramatic change could not be more blatant," Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, chief program officer at the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>, said in a statement reported by HuffPost. "To reverse the cataclysmic changes occurring in nature, countries around the globe must heed scientists, who warn that heading off this rapid decline will require transformative action."</p><p><a href="https://www.campaignfornature.org/" target="_blank">Campaign for Nature</a> Director Brian O'Donnell, meanwhile, told The Guardian that the draft was a good "first step."</p><p>"Much work remains to be done in the coming months to ensure that the rights of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self">indigenous</a> people are advanced, and bold <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> and finance targets are included in the final agreement," he said.</p><p>One of the draft's 20 goals does call for promoting the "full and effective participation" of indigenous communities, as well as women and young people, in conservation decision making.</p>
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Study urges conservation push for critically endangered black rhinos. CC0 1.0
With the consequences of human activities pushing Earth into a sixth mass extinction, a team of biologists have calculated that plant and animal species are being wiped out so quickly that evolution cannot keep up.
Human activities—including pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, poaching, warming oceans and extreme weather events tied to climate change—are predicted to drive so many mammals to extinction in the next five decades that nature will need somewhere between 3 to 7 million years to restore biodiversity levels to where it was before modern humans evolved, according to an alarming new analysis published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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The study's authors, who hail from Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, are urging drastic conservation efforts.
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"It is much easier to save biodiversity now than to re-evolve it later," lead author Matt Davis of Aarhus University said in a
<a href="https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/au-mce101118.php" target="_blank">press release</a>.
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For the study, the researchers combed through an extensive database of mammals that includes existing species and species that lived in the recent past but have gone extinct since the rise of Homo sapiens. They determined that in the 130,000 years that humans have wandered the planet, we've erased 2.5 billion years-worth of evolutionary development by driving 300 million different mammal species to extinction.
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When certain species die off, much of its "phylogenetic diversity" disappears, too. For instance, as Davis explained to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/15/humanity-is-cutting-down-the-tree-of-life-warn-scientists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, losing a few species of shrew is not as devastating as losing elephants. Losing elephants is akin to "chopping a large branch off the tree of life … whereas losing a shrew species would be like trimming off a small twig."
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Davis further noted in the press release:
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"Large mammals, or megafauna, such as giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers, which became extinct about 10,000 years ago, were highly evolutionarily distinct. Since they had few close relatives, their extinctions meant that entire branches of Earth's evolutionary tree were chopped off. There are hundreds of species of shrew, so they can weather a few extinctions. There were only four species of saber-toothed tiger; they all went extinct."
</blockquote><p>
Worryingly, some of today's most iconic megafauna are facing increasing rates of extinction, the press release warns. Black rhinos are at high risk of becoming extinct within the next 50 years. Asian elephants have less than a 33 percent chance of lasting beyond this century.
</p><p>
"Although we once lived in a world of giants: giant beavers, giant armadillos, giant deer, etc., we now live in a world that is becoming increasingly impoverished of large wild mammalian species. The few remaining giants, such as rhinos and elephants, are in danger of being wiped out very rapidly," said Jens-Christian Svenning from Aarhus University in the press release.
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Saving animals with the long evolutionary histories—including the black rhino, the red panda and the indri lemur—should thus be prioritized.
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"This highlights species we should try to save and could help us prioritize conservation," Davis told The Guardian.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="daf4c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="LFDQ7J1579006435"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="885063715225313281" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Already Underway https://t.co/b5l4cIXKWk @globalactplan @foeeurope</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/885063715225313281">1499850608.0</a></blockquote></div>
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A coffee farmer picks fresh coffee cherries in Colombia. Neil Palmer / International Center for Tropical Agriculture
Human civilization utterly depends on our precious food supplies, but the planet's sixth mass extinction of plants and animals currently underway is also threatening the world's food crops, according to a new report from Bioversity International.
"Huge proportions of the plant and animal species that form the foundation of our food supply are just as endangered [as wildlife] and are getting almost no attention," Ann Tutwiler, director general of Bioversity International, wrote in an article for the Guardian.
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"If there is one thing we cannot allow to become extinct, it is the species that provide the food that sustains each and every one of the seven billion people on our planet," she said.
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According to the report, 940 cultivated species are already threatened. Tutwiler emphasized the impact on popular foods and commodities:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"> "Take some consumer favorites: chips, chocolate and coffee. Up to 22% of wild potato species are predicted to become <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222567867_The_effect_of_climate_change_on_crop_wild_relatives" target="_blank">extinct by 2055</a> due to climate change. In Ghana and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/13/chocolate-industry-drives-rainforest-disaster-in-ivory-coast" target="_blank">Ivory Coast</a>, where the raw ingredient for 70% of our chocolate is grown, cacao trees <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-race-to-save-chocolate/" target="_blank">will not be able to survive</a> as temperatures rise by two degrees over the next 40 years. Coffee yields in Tanzania have <a href="https://theconversation.com/coffee-lovers-beware-climate-change-may-affect-your-brew-42366" target="_blank">dropped 50%</a> since 1960."
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<span></span>Additionally, of the estimated 5,538 plant species counted as food, just three—rice, wheat and maize—provide more than 50 percent of the world's plant-derived calories.
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"Relying so heavily on such a narrow resource base is a risky strategy for the planet, for individual livelihoods and for nutritious diets," the report states.
</p><p>
<span></span>As the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/26/sixth-mass-extinction-of-wildlife-also-threatens-global-food-supplies" target="_blank">Guardian</a> pointed out, a disease or pest can sweep through large areas of monocultures, like during the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/10/teeth-of-irish-famine-victims-reveal-scientific-markers-for-starvation" target="_blank">Irish potato famine</a> when a million people starved to death.
</p><p>
Tutwiler noted that the world's incredible diversity of wild or rarely cultivated species—such the beta carotene-rich <span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gac" target="_blank">gac</a> fruit from Vietnam or the vitamin A-filled <a href="http://www.promusa.org/Asupina" target="_blank">Asupina banana</a>—"can be a source of affordable, nutritious food—provided we don't let it disappear."
</p><p>
"This 'agrobiodiversity' is a precious resource that we are losing, and yet it can also help solve or mitigate many challenges the world is facing," she said. "It has a critical yet overlooked role in helping us improve global nutrition, reduce our impact on the environment and adapt to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_blank">climate change</a>."
</p><p>
In an interview with <a href="https://foodtank.com/news/2017/09/ann-tutwiler-agrobiodiversity/" target="_blank">FoodTank</a>, Tutwiler commented on how <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/agribusiness">agribusiness</a> and the Western diet has also contributed to the world's loss of biological diversity of food:
</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"From the production side, a focus on 'feeding the world' rather than 'nourishing the world' has led to a focus on a handful of starchy staples that has contributed to an increase in land planted with maize, wheat, and rice from 66 percent to 79 percent of all cereal area between 1961 and 2013.
</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">
On the consumption side, there is a growing global tendency towards Western diets and processed convenience foods. Diets are based more and more on major cereals, plus sugar and oil. So these now dominate our agricultural production. Of the 30,000-ish plant species that can be used as food, today only three—rice, wheat, and maize—provide half the world's plant-derived calories and intakes of pulses, fruits, and vegetables are low.
</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">
At the same time, the same pressures that are driving the sixth mass extinction of wild biodiversity are also affecting agricultural biodiversity—habitat transformation, deforestation, invasive species, and climate change. They also lead to disruption in pollinators and natural pest control. Loss of wild biodiversity can lead to erosion of genetic diversity (like the wild relatives of crops, which are a valuable source of traits for breeding), which reduces options for breeding new plant varieties better adapted to climate change."</p><p>
Bioversity International's new 200-page report, "Mainstreaming Agrobiodiversity in Sustainable Food Systems," highlights how governments and companies should protect and encourage agrobiodiversity to tackle wider global problems such as poverty, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change.
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The Sixth Extinction: Climate Change May Wipe Out a Third of World's Parasites
11 September 2017
Climate
www.youtube.com
As the U.S. continues to deal with unprecedented floods and hurricanes, a new study has revealed climate change is also driving the mass extinction of parasites that are critical to natural ecosystems, and could add to the planet's sixth great mass extinction event that's currently underway.
<p>The report in the journal Science Advances warns that about a third of all parasite species could go extinct by 2070 due to human activity. The loss of species of lice, fleas and worms could have profound ripple effects on the environment and might pave the way for new parasites to colonize humans and other animals with disastrous health outcomes.</p><p>We speak to Colin Carlson, lead author of the report "Parasite Biodiversity Faces Extinction and Redistribution in a Changing Climate." He's a PhD candidate in environmental science, policy, and management at University of California-Berkeley. In 2011, Business Insider included him in a round-up titled "16 of the Smartest Children in History" alongside Mozart and Picasso. At the time he was 15 years old. He is now 21. <br></p>
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