The planet is in the midst of drastic biodiversity loss that some experts think may be the next great species die-off. How did we get here and what can be done about it?
We’re in the midst of a planetary sixth extinction. The present episode has only one root cause: Homo sapiens.
There is no better snapshot of biodiversity woes than the landmark 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The work of hundreds of scientists who reviewed data from more than 15,000 sources, the report highlights humanity’s crucial reliance on nature for food, water, medicines, energy, livelihoods, and cultural and spiritual fulfilment. It also shows this same dependence eroding nature, with species rapidly declining in both range and number. (An example: despite the loss of a quarter of North American bird fauna since 1970—an estimated three billion animals—industry continues to kill hundreds of millions of birds annually.) Essential services provided by ecosystems—water filtration, carbon storage, seed dispersal, pollination—are also breaking down. Having “severely altered” three-quarters of the planet’s land surface, humanity has put one million species at risk of extinction.
This eye-opening number corroborates that we’re in the midst of a planetary sixth mass extinction. The previous five, spread over a half-billion years of geological time, accrued from combined natural causes—cataclysmic meteor strikes, volcanism, and atmospheric shifts. The present episode has only one root cause: Homo sapiens.
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