UN: "Much of nature is already lost and what's left is declining"

"Much of nature is already lost and what remains in decline," say UN experts on biodiversity in a report that lists Devastated ecosystems, contaminated water, stale air and hundreds of thousands of endangered species.

The alarming conclusion comes from a 1,800-page study project in which the AFP at the end of a meeting this week in Paris of Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Nature provides invaluable services to man such as water, food, energy, textiles, minerals, medicines.

For example, agricultural production, made possible by soils and pollinators, is steadily increasing and fish catches have increased by 50% over the last 50 years.

More than 2 billion people use tree wood as a source of energy. And between 25 and 50% of pharmaceuticals come from nature.

Plants and microorganisms also play a crucial role in the filtration of water and air. And vegetation and oceans absorb more than half of the CO2 emissions that cause climate change.

Unpublished exploitation and pollution

But man exploits and pollutes nature as never before in history.

The result is that today "75% of the terrestrial environment, 40% of the marine environment and 50% of water courses show significant signs of degradation", according to the draft report.

Today, more than 40% of the land is agricultural and urban, and only 13% of the oceans and 23% of the land are clbadified as "virgin", in very isolated or unproductive places.

"More than one third of the land and three quarters of the water resources are used for agricultural production and livestock", according to the text.

Soil degradation has reduced agricultural productivity by more than 20% of the land area and affected more than 3 billion people.

And agriculture continues to grow, especially "at the expense of the rainforest".

Between 1990 and 2015, global forest cover decreased by almost 6%, from 4,280 million hectares to 3,990 million.

About 60% of the world's population lives in cities and urbanized areas have doubled since 1992, occupying mainly sheets and plains.

Pollution is more difficult to evaluate, but the use of fertilizer has increased.

More than 80% of the world's wastewater is released into the environment without treatment and simultaneously, "300 to 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, toxic wastewater and other wastes are released into the water each year".

In this way, "40% of the world's population does not have access to clean and safe water".

The oceans, where tons of plastic are dumped each year, do not come out any better.

The 70,000 vessels in the industrial fishing fleet now cover "at least 55% of the seas". In addition, "about 75% of the main fish stocks" are currently depleted or overexploited.

Scientists estimate about 8 million the number of animal and plant species on the planet. But only a tiny part of them is evaluated.

About 25% of the 100 000 spices studied by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its famous red list are clbadified as endangered and 872 have been extinct for 500 years.

But the report from the IPBES expert group is much more dramatic: between 500,000 and a million species would be in danger today.

By extrapolating from multiple species badessments, it is "likely that at least one million species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction", says the draft report.

Scientists, who use another method of estimation based on habitat loss, reach the probably "cautious" figure of half a million, including 3,000 vertebrates and more than 40,000 plants.

These species are "dead in suspense" because they are probably already "doomed to disappear" because of the damage to their habitat.

By Laure Fillon and Amélie Bottollier-Depois / AFP