The Living Planet Report 2018, released on Monday by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), reports that since 1970, the earth has seen its wildlife populations decline, on average, by 60 percent. This includes mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. According to the report, the declines have been felt most drastically in South and Central America, where 89 percent of the wildlife has been wiped away. Also terrifying is the fact that freshwater ecosystems have seen an 83 percent reduction in their biodiversity during that time.
Is it all just because of fossil fuels? No. Is it all just because of chemical pollutants? No. Is it all just because of deforestation, pesticides, climate change, fresh-water and air pollution, plastics, or general human waste? No. No, it is all of those things. WWF argues that the biggest issues that need to be dealt with in order to slow down this decline are habitat loss and overexploitation.
While climate change is a growing threat, the main drivers of biodiversity decline continue to be the overexploitation of species, agriculture and land conversion. Indeed, a recent assessment found that only a quarter of land on Earth is substantively free of the impacts of human activities. This is projected to decline to just one tenth by 2050. Land degradation includes forest loss; while globally this loss has slowed due to reforestation and plantations it has accelerated in tropical forests that contain some of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. Ongoing degradation has many impacts on species, the quality of habitats and the functioning of ecosystems. Two recent studies have focused on the dramatic reductions in bee and other pollinator numbers and on the risks to soil biodiversity, critical to sustain food production and other ecosystem services.
This isn’t the first and won’t be the last study to reveal how abnormally our planet’s plant and animal life are declining. The United States and other powerhouse countries, like China, getting their act together and pushing for strong environmental protections and progressive energy innovation is humanity’s best chance at surviving into a future where the earth is still hospitable to our forms of life.
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