Photo: Policies that put economic growth before environmental conservation shoulder some of the blame. (Supplied: IPBES) Related Story: There’s a growing push to give nature legal rights, but what would that mean?Related Story: Extinction Rebellion protests continue in London as police call for reinforcementsRelated Story: Here’s what 4,000 floating thermometers tell us about the future
One million of the world’s species are now under threat of extinction, according to the biggest-ever review of the state of nature on Earth.
Key points:
- The report, which draws on 15,000 scientific and government sources, says human use of land and sea resources are mostly to blame
- The decline in nature is happening at rates that are unprecedented in human history, the UN report reveals
- More than 40 per cent of amphibian species, almost 33 per cent of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened
The UN-backed report was three years in the making and was based on systematic reviews of 15,000 scientific and government sources.
Among a vast number of alarming findings is that the average population size of native species in most habitats on land has fallen by at least 20 per cent, mostly since 1900.
More than 40 per cent of amphibian species, almost 33 per cent of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are now under threat.
“We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said Sir Robert Watson, the chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which put together the report.
The IPBES has 132 nation-members and is known as the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but for biodiversity.
