#ipbes

Sir Patrick Vallance is the UK government’s chief scientific adviser

The relationship between humans and nature is under intense and increasing strain. The report released today by Ipbes, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (akin to the IPCC reports on climate change), provides compelling evidence that humans are overexploiting wild species and habitats. Harmful activities, including habitat destruction, poor farming practices and pollution, have altered ecosystems significantly, driving many species past the point of recovery. In Great Britain alone, of the 8,431 species assessed in the 2019 State of Nature report, 1,188 are threatened with extinction. Globally, there are an estimated one million at risk, with biodiversity declining at a faster rate than at any time in human history.

We cannot ignore biodiversity loss. Biodiversity is the variability that exists among all living organisms, between different species, within species including genetic makeup, and in wider ecosystems. Billions of people rely on wild species for food, clean water, energy, income and health and wellbeing. Annually, crops worth up to £480bn are pollinated by a variety of wild animals, and an estimated 4 billion people depend on natural medicines for their healthcare. These vital ecosystem services are fundamentally based on a healthy environment, and this requires biodiversity. Losing biodiversity leaves species and ecosystems less resilient to challenges such as invasive species or pests, meaning there is an increased risk of whole populations being wiped out and destabilising the entire ecological network. Nature is a finite resource, and human self-interest alone should determine that biodiversity must be protected.

Alongside overexploitation, humans are driving biodiversity loss by destroying, polluting and fragmenting habitats across the globe. Many of the UK’s important peatlands, which provide a home for rare species such as the hen harrier, have been drained for agricultural use. The Amazon rainforest is being cleared to such an extent that it may be near a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.

The climate crisis is exacerbating the issue. Many species simply cannot adapt to the scale and pace of changing temperatures. For example, warming seas and ocean acidification are devastating coral reefs around the world. This year, the Great Barrier Reef suffered its sixth mass bleaching event since 1998 with more than 90% of reefs affected. In many cases, when an ecosystem loses biodiversity, it becomes less able to store carbon, contributing to further climate change. We have a vicious cycle: climate change leads to biodiversity losses, which in turn leads to further climate change. As governments around the world develop plans to reduce carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity, the message isthe message is simple: we must solve both problems together.

What can be done? Just as science has diagnosed the problem, it can provide solutions. Using strong evidence, such as this Ipbes report, governments can develop effective policy. Integrated and collaborative planning can deliver sustainable solutions which address climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, protecting and enriching human lives.

In southern India, scientists, Indigenous communities and local government have worked collaboratively to protect and restore mangrove forests. The trees’ interconnecting large-root systems offer protection against rising sea levels, provide habitats for fish and crustaceans, and clean surrounding water. The trees also draw and store carbon from the atmosphere and encourage carbon-rich sediment deposits. The increase in wildlife has benefited small scale fisheries and tourism. Innovative and effective nature-based initiatives such as these could be implemented throughout different landscapes across the planet.

There are also simple day-to-day things we can do to benefit our environment; for instance, reducing food waste. Currently about 30% of all food produced globally goes uneaten, meaning a significant proportion of the resources, and importantly the land used to grow, process, pack and transport it, is wasted and less able to support biodiversity.

Political will and leadership are needed, and the 15th UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference in December, CBD Cop15, provides the next critical opportunity for governments to commit to real ambitious change.

CBD Cop15 could deliver landmark action and be as important for biodiversity as the Paris Agreement is proving for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will set the direction for the next decade of international action and beyond. Governments should agree to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, and develop evidence-based, actionable plans to do so. An important challenge is to define a reliable and simple integrated metric, like carbon emissions have been used for climate goals. At the end of June, negotiators met in Nairobi for their latest attempt to agree the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and while progress was made, it did not go far enough.

In bullet format, here are these overlooked facts cited in the UN report, in an extract from this Think Progress story:

Since 1900, the “average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats” has dropped by at least 20%.

The number of invasive species in 21 countries has increased by about 70% since 1970.

At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction by humans since the 16th century.

Roughly half of the living coral that covers reefs has been lost since the 1870s.

About 9% — or 500,000 — of the world’s estimated 5.9 million terrestrial species do not have sufficient habitat needed for their long-term survival, noting that habitat restoration would help reduce this risk.

More than 40% of the world’s amphibians are also threatened with extinction, while almost a third of coral reefs, sharks, and shark relatives (like skates and rays) are at risk, along with more than a third of all marine mammals.

With 2 degrees Celsius of warming, 5% of species are expected to be put at risk of extinction. This could increase to 16% should global temperatures rise by 4.3 degrees Celsius.

Compared to the past 10 million years, this projected rate of species loss is “tens to hundreds of times” greater than the historic average, the summary states, “and the rate is accelerating.”

Three-quarters of the Earth’s terrestrial environment has been “severely altered” by human activities, while 66% of the world’s oceans have been impacted. For example, more than 85% of wetlands that existed in 1700 were lost by 2000.

Since 1992, urban areas have more than doubled.

The consumption of materials per capita around the world has increased by 15% since 1980. And plastic pollution has grown ten-fold during that same period.

Meanwhile, between 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge, and other industrial wastes are dumped into the world’s waters each year.

Since 1970, food crop production has increased by 300%. According to the U.N. assessment summary, half of all agriculture expansion has come at the expense of forests.

Due to pollinator loss, between $235 billion and $577 billion in crop value is at risk.

Earlier this year a major study on the losses being felt across the natural world as result of broader human impacts caused a huge stir among governments.

The IPBES report showed that up to one million species could be lost in coming decades.

Just a reminder....

“The diversity of life on our planet is deteriorating far more rapidly than previously thought, with up to 1 million species threatened with extinction, many of which could be lost "within decades," concludes a sweeping new scientific assessment released Monday in Paris.

Why it matters: The report, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), finds that factors such as land use change, overfishing, pollution, climate change and population growth are pushing nature to the brink. Only "transformational change" to the way society operates can put us back on course to meet global sustainable development targets, which nearly every country on Earth has committed to, the report concludes.”

Human society is in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems, the world’s leading scientists have warned, as they announced the results of the most thorough planetary health check ever undertaken. From coral reefs flickering out beneath the oceans to rainforests desiccating into savannahs, nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10m years, according to the UN global assessment report. The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions, said the study, compiled over three years by more than 450 scientists and diplomats.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent, international organization established by its member states (including the US), today (May 6) released its “Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services.” The full report, which is expected to be around 1,500 pages, will be released later this year.

Plenty of people around the world are reading this Summary. I downloaded the report to my computer earlier this morning, and have read parts of it. But right now (around noon California time), you can get to the media release page, but not to the actual report. You’ll see this message: “Too many requests. Sorry, this link has been automatically turned off for now. Learn more about traffic limits.”  Here’s the link to the media release page. From there, you can download the report (the link to the report is toward the top of the media page), once the traffic eases up.

The report is dense and loaded with scientific text and data, so it’s not an easy read. Regardless, it’s readable and, with patient reading, you can understand it. It’s as depressing a read as the report about climate.

I’ll post some infographics from the report in separate posts.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times story about the Summary report:

Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in.

Excerpt: