Report: Biodiversity loss and climate change lead to an ‘escalating nature crisis’

The number of wild animals declined by 69% worldwide between 1970 and 2018, according to a report released Wednesday by the World Wildlife Fund. Diets have been a major driver of biodiversity loss, accounting for 70% of the decline in wild animal numbers and half of the decline in freshwater species monitored for the report. Conservation alone will not be enough to stem these declines, the authors wrote, who said scaling up sustainable food production is critical.

“The results are stark,” the authors wrote. “While we need to act urgently to restore the health of the natural world, there is no sign of the loss of nature stopping, let alone reversing.”

The decline has been particularly sharp in Latin America — where the number of wild animals under control declined by 94% between 1970 and 2018 — and in freshwater ecosystems around the world, where the population has fallen by 83%. The North American wildlife population declined 20% during that time, according to the report, which tracks the relative abundance of nearly 32,000 groups of 5,230 species across the planet.

The report also outlined a global biodiversity target: Nature Positive by 2030. That is, reversing a decline in wildlife populations by the end of this century, with full recovery by 2050. The report’s authors said this goal should be a “steering star,” as much as it helped Targets of limiting global warming to 1.5°C or net zero emissions focus on combating climate change.

And while diets are to blame for much of the loss of biodiversity, they also present a major opportunity for mitigation. In a companion report focused on food, the authors identify 20 diet “leverages” that can be used to help wildlife groups recover, including maximizing crop yields to set aside land, developing plant- and algae-based proteins, and redirecting agricultural subsidies away from commodities and toward sustainable foods. and incorporation of human health and the environment into national dietary guidelines.

With two major international environmental conferences on the horizon – the United Nations Climate Conference in November and the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December – the report called climate change and biodiversity loss “double and interconnected emergencies” that must be jointly addressed. Food systems, which account for 30% of global emissions, “should take center stage in these events,” the report said.

Land use change, such as plowing prairies to grow maize or clearing forests for subdivisions, is currently the biggest driver of biodiversity loss. But the report said climate change will become the dominant cause in the coming decades if emissions are not curbed quickly. Climate change is already causing mass deaths, such as the deaths of 45,000 flying foxes on one hot day in Australia in 2014. In the Costa Rican rainforests, rising temperatures have reduced the number of foggy days, causing the golden frog to become extinct.

Each degree of warming will increase the extent of biodiversity loss, the report said. Biodiversity loss and climate change can lead to devastating feedback loops; When forests are cleared, for example, local climates become hotter and drier.

“The pressure we place on the natural world is driving the nature crisis,” the authors wrote. “There is still time to act, but urgency is needed.”

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Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin