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One million species risk extinction due to humans: draft UN report
PARIS, April 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Up to one million species face extinction
due to human influence, according to a draft UN report obtained by AFP that
painstakingly catalogues how humanity has undermined the natural resources
upon which its very survival depends.
The accelerating loss of clean air, drinkable water, CO2-absorbing forests,
pollinating insects, protein-rich fish and storm-blocking mangroves — to
name but a few of the dwindling services rendered by Nature — poses no less
of a threat than climate change, says the report, set to be unveiled May 6.
Indeed, biodiversity loss and global warming are closely linked, according
to the 44-page Summary for Policy Makers, which distills a 1,800-page UN
assessment of scientific literature on the state of Nature.
Delegates from 130 nations meeting in Paris from April 29 will vet the
executive summary line-by-line. Wording may change, but figures lifted from
the underlying report cannot be altered.
“We need to recognise that climate change and loss of Nature are equally
important, not just for the environment, but as development and economic
issues as well,” Robert Watson, chair of the UN-mandated body that compiled
the report, told AFP, without divulging its findings.
“The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating
services that we get from Nature,” he said, adding that only “transformative
change” can stem the damage.
Deforestation and agriculture, including livestock production, account for
about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and have wreaked havoc on
natural ecosystems as well.
– ‘Mass extinction event’ –
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services (IPBES) report warns of “an imminent rapid acceleration in the
global rate of species extinction.”
The pace of loss “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has
been, on average, over the last 10 million years,” it notes.
“Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with
extinction, many within decades.”
Many experts think a so-called “mass extinction event” — only the sixth in
the last half-billion years — is already under way.
The most recent saw the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years
ago, when a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid strike wiped out most lifeforms.
Scientists estimate that Earth is today home to some eight million distinct
species, a majority of them insects.
A quarter of catalogued animal and plant species are already being crowded,
eaten or poisoned out of existence.
The drop in sheer numbers is even more dramatic, with wild mammal biomass –
– their collective weight — down by 82 percent.
Humans and livestock account for more than 95 percent of mammal biomass.
– Population growth –
“If we’re going to have a sustainable planet that provides services to
communities around the world, we need to change this trajectory in the next
ten years, just as we need to do that with climate,” noted WWF chief
scientist Rebecca Shaw, formerly a member of the UN scientific bodies for
both climate and biodiversity.
The direct causes of species loss, in order of importance, are shrinking
habitat and land-use change, hunting for food or illicit trade in body parts,
climate change, pollution, and alien species such as rats, mosquitoes and
snakes that hitch rides on ships or planes, the report finds.
“There are also two big indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and climate
change — the number of people in the world and their growing ability to
consume,” said Watson.
Once seen as primarily a future threat to animal and plant life, the
disruptive impact of global warming has accelerated.
Shifts in the distribution of species, for example, will likely double if
average temperature go up a notch from 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit)
to 2C.
So far, the global thermometer has risen 1C compared with mid-19th century
levels.
The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins nations to cap the rise to “well below”
2C. But a landmark UN climate report in October said that would still be
enough to boost the intensity and frequency of deadly heatwaves, droughts,
floods and storms.
– Global inequity –
Other findings in the report include:
– Three-quarters of land surfaces, 40 percent of the marine environment,
and 50 percent of inland waterways across the globe have been “severely
altered”.
– Many of the areas where Nature’s contribution to human wellbeing will be
most severely compromised are home to indigenous peoples and the world’s
poorest communities that are also vulnerable to climate change.
– More than two billion people rely on wood fuel for energy, four billion
rely on natural medicines, and more than 75 percent of global food crops
require animal pollination.
– Nearly half of land and marine ecosystems have been profoundly
compromised by human interference in the last 50 years.
– Subsidies to fisheries, industrial agriculture, livestock raising,
forestry, mining and the production of biofuel or fossil fuel energy
encourage waste, inefficiency and over-consumption.
The report cautioned against climate change solutions that may
inadvertently harm Nature.
The use, for example, of biofuels combined with “carbon capture and
storage” — the sequestration of CO2 released when biofuels are burned — is
widely seen as key in the transition to green energy on a global scale.
But the land needed to grow all those biofuel crops may wind up cutting
into food production, the expansion of protected areas or reforestation
efforts.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0817 hrs