Lost world: Nature at death’s door
Here are the report’s key findings, which read like a charge sheet against history’s most destructive creatures: ourselves.
EXTINCTION
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report, the first of its kind in 15 years, predicts a harrowing future for plants and animals. One million species face the risk of extinction – many within decades. This mass extinction will have a direct and lasting impact on human life, the report warns.
CONSUMPTION
As our population swells, so does mankind’s consumption. The report depicts a world ravaged by an insatiable demand for resources. Crop production has surged 300 percent since 1970, meaning one-third of all land is now used to make food – an industry that uses 75 percent of all fresh water on Earth. At least one quarter of all man-made emissions come from agriculture, the vast majority from meat production. What’s worse, half of all new agricultural land is taken from forests, the lungs of the planet that suck greenhouse gases from the air. There is currently less than 70 percent of the forest cover Earth had before the Industrial Revolution.
POLLUTION
We dump up to 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, toxic sludge and other waste into oceans and rivers each year. There are roughly 17,000 mines operating worldwide, and at least 6,500 oil and gas installations, kept viable by US$345 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. The underlying report, compiled from more than 15,000 academic papers and research publications, estimates that 75 percent of land, 40 percent of oceans and 50 percent of rivers “manifest severe impacts of degradation” from human activity.
INEQUALITY
The report’s story of Earth is also one of rife inequality, with richer nations consuming vastly more per capita than poorer ones battling to retain their natural resources. Indeed, per capita demand for materials is four times greater in high- than in low-income economies. The inequality gap is huge and widening: GDP per head is already 50 times larger in wealthy nations than in poor ones.
CLIMATE
The authors stress that whatever losses humans inflict on Nature will in turn be inflicted upon us. More than two billion people still rely on wood as their main energy source, and up to half of all medicines come from plants and animals. Business as usual is predicted to warm Earth 4.3 degrees Celsius by 2100. Were that to happen, the authors warned, as many as one in six of all species could be wiped out.