Armageddon On Notice Says UNESCO

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08 May 2019

Monday May 6 saw a UN biodiversity report state that nearly one million species are at risk of becoming extinct because of human actions while current efforts to conserve the earth’s resources will likely fail.

Speaking in Paris at the launch of the Global Assessment study – the first such report since 2005 – UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said that its findings put the world on notice. She said: “Following the adoption of this historic report, no one will be able to claim that they did not know,

“We can no longer continue to destroy the diversity of life. This is our responsibility towards future generations.”

Highlighting the universal importance of biodiversity, Azoulay said that protecting it 'is as vital as fighting climate change'.

IPBES

Presented to more than 130 government delegations for their approval at UNESCO headquarters, the report features the work of 400 experts from at least 50 countries, coordinated by the Bonn based Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

In addition to providing exhaustive insights on the state of nature, ecosystems and how nature underpins all human activity, the study also discusses progress on key international goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The report also examines five main drivers of unprecedented biodiversity and ecosystem change over the past 50 years, identifying them as changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species.

One in four species at risk of extinction

On at-risk fauna and flora, the study asserts that human activities 'threaten more species now than ever before' – a finding based on the fact that around 25 per cent of species in plant and animal groups are vulnerable.

This suggests that around one million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss.

Without such measures there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction, which is already 'at least tens to hundreds of times higher, than it has averaged over the past 10 million years', the report states.

Domesticated breeds

The report notes that despite many local efforts, including by indigenous peoples and local communities, by 2016, 559 of the 6,190 domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture were extinct – around nine per cent of the total - and at least 1,000 more are threatened.

Crop security

In addition, many wild relatives of traditional crops that are needed for long-term food security 'lack effective protection', the report insists, while the status of wild relatives of domesticated mammals and birds 'is worsening'.

Reductions in the diversity of cultivated crops, wild crop relatives and domesticated breeds mean that farming will likely be less resilient against future climate change, pests and pathogens.

'While more food, energy and materials than ever before are now being supplied to people in most places, this is increasingly at the expense of nature’s ability to provide such contributions in the future', the report states, before adding that 'the biosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends…is declining faster than at any time in human history'.

Picture: The Splendid Leaf frog from Ecuador.

Article written by Brian Shillibeer | Published 08 May 2019

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