Here’s the link to the website for the United Nations report, entitled, “Global Biodiversity Outlook 5,” described in this story. From there, you can download a summary, or the entire report.
The story tells us that this report is the fourth in a parade of reports on biodiversity that have been issued over the past year. I’ve posted links to all of them, and summarized what I learned about them. A summary of these reports from this New York Times story:
Last year, an exhaustive international report concluded that humans had reshaped the natural world so drastically that one million species of animals and plants were at risk of extinction. This year, the World Economic Forum’s annual global risk report identified biodiversity loss, in addition to climate change, as one of the most urgent threats, saying that “human-driven nature and biodiversity loss is threatening life on our planet.” Last week, a respected index of animal life showed that, on average, the populations of almost 4,400 monitored mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish had declined by 68 percent since 1970.
Trends in biodiversity (various metrics, left axis) have been declining and are projected to continue to do so under business as usual scenarios (trend line). Various areas of action could reduce the rate of biodiversity decline, and the full portfolio of actions, in combination, could halt and reverse the decline (bend the curve), potentially leading to net biodiversity gains after 2030. These are, from bottom to top: (1) Enhanced conservation and restoration of ecosystems; (2) climate change mitigation; (3) action on pollution, invasive alien species and overexploitation; (4) more sustainable production of goods and services, especially food; and (5) reduced consumption and waste. However, none of the areas of action alone, nor in partial combinations, can bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Moreover, the effectiveness of each area of action is enhanced by the other areas (see Part III of the full report for discussion).
Excerpt from this
New York Times story:
The world is failing to address a catastrophic biodiversity collapse that not only threatens to wipe out beloved species and invaluable genetic diversity, but endangers humanity’s food supply, health and security, according to a sweeping United Nations report issued on Tuesday.
When governments act to protect and restore nature, the authors found, it works. But despite commitments made 10 years ago, nations have not come close to meeting the scale of the crisis, which continues to worsen because of unsustainable farming, overfishing, burning of fossil fuels and other activities.
“Humanity stands at a crossroads,” the report said.
It comes as the devastating consequences that can result from an unhealthy relationship with nature are on full display: A pandemic that very likely jumped from bats has upended life worldwide, and wildfires, worsened by climate change and land management policies, are ravaging the American West.
“These things are a sign of what is to come,” said David Cooper, an author of the report and the deputy executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the global treaty underlying the assessment. “These things will only get worse if we don’t change course.”
The report looked at a decade of efforts by national governments. In 2010, after painstaking scientific work and arduous negotiation, almost every country in the world signed on to 20 goals under the convention to staunch the biodiversity hemorrhage.
At the time, the science was already clear: Human activity was decimating animals and plants across the planet, causing a wave of extinctions and throwing ecosystems so out of balance that the domino effects threatened humans themselves. The agreement, with a deadline of 2020 for the new goals, was a hard-won diplomatic triumph.
The report, which assesses progress on the 20 goals, has found that the world is doing far too little.
