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Rapid loss of life on Earth
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| Turtle caught in plastic pollution in the Ocean. |
Humanity's population explosion and massive overconsumption of natural resources is killing off wildlife at an unprecedented rate. In the 2018 Living Planet Report by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) we come to understand that there has been a 60% decline in species population sizes since 1970. Especially hard hit are the tropics in South and Central America, which have seen a 89% loss compared to 1970. And freshwater ecosystems, like rivers and lakes, have experienced the largest decline of 83%. We have killed off 83% of all mammals and 50% of all plants since the dawn of civilisation, and its irreversible on human timescales. It is truly a biological annihilation as coined in a scientific study published by Ceballos et al. in PNAS last year.
In 2017 the world lost an amount of forest area equivalent to the size of Italy, destroying habitats, causing biodiversity loss and polluting the environment. There is a growing number of scientists that are now calling for a global deal for nature, creating vast nature reserves to prevent biological armageddon.
The loss of biodiversity is a tragedy in itself but it also threatens the survival of civilisation says experts to the Guardian. People don't understand that biodiversity underpins ecosystem health and thus human health. We already see a dramatic rise in chronic diseases caused by unhealthy diets and pollution. Around 93% of the world's children under the age of 15 years, 1.8 billion children, breathe air so polluted it puts their health at risk and tragically about 600,000 children die from acute lower respiratory infections every year. Studies have also shown that it's not just seabirds that have plastic in their stomachs but we humans have it too.
Can we turn this development around? We only have until the year 2020 to get our act together according to the WWF-report or it will be too late. Governments need to increase investments several fold into safeguarding biodiversity on land and in the oceans. Protected areas should be expanded to cover at least 20 percent of natural habitats on land and 30 percent of habitats in the ocean. But I'm having a hard time seeing that happening in a world of depleting resources and growing population. Do we have foresight enough to safeguard life on Earth for our own survival? It remains an open question I guess...
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