"Humans have exterminated 60% of the wild animal population since 1970": WWF report reveals "alarming statistics"



[ad_1]

Paris : Uncontrolled consumption has decimated wildlife, triggered a mbadive extinction and depleted the Earth's ability to satisfy humanity's growing appetite, the conservation group said Tuesday WWF

between 1970 and 2014, 60% of animals a spine – fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals – was annihilated by human activities, according to the WWF's "Living Planet" report, based on an investigation into over 4,000 species in 16,700 scattered populations around the world. [19659002] "The situation is really bad and it is getting worse," said WWF International Managing Director Marco Lambertini, AFP . "The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening."

  The award-winning photo titled

The award-winning image titled "Hell is Here". Courtesy of Biplap Hazra @ Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards 2017 (image used for illustrative purposes)

For freshwater fauna, the decline of the population over the 44 years followed was staggering 80%. At the regional level, Latin America was the most affected, with a loss of fauna of nearly 90% during the same period.

Another set of data confirmed the depth of an ongoing mbad extinction event, the sixth in half a billion years.

According to the included terrestrial forms of life, the current rate of loss of species is 100 to 1,000 times greater than it was only a few hundred years ago, when the people began to change the chemistry of the Earth and to invade other extinct creatures.

Measured in weight or biombad, wild animals make up only 4% of the world's mammals, with humans (36%) and livestock (60%) making up the rest

. This ratio was probably reversed ten thousand years ago. "The statistics are scary," said Piero Visconti, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and one of the 59 co-authors of the 80-page report. "Unlike population declines, extinctions are irreversible." For corals, it may be too late.

Back-to-back sea-waves have already wiped out half of the world's shallow reefs, home to a quarter of marine life. Even if humanity manages to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C – impossible mission, according to some scientists, coral mortality would probably be 70 to 90%.

A 2C world would be a death sentence, according to a major UN report concluded last. month. Half a century of conservation efforts has been spectacularly successful, including tigers, manatees, grizzlies, bluefin tuna and bald eagles. "If we had not made those efforts, the situation would have been much worse," Lambertini said.

But the attack of hunting, habitat reduction, pollution, illegal trade and climate change – caused by man was too difficult to overcome, did he recognized. "Scientists call this the" big acceleration, "he said during a phone interview. "It's the exponential growth in the use of energy, water, wood, fish, food, fertilizer, pesticides, minerals, plastics, energy, energy water, fish, food. "

Conservation Circles – also took off around 1950, the date that scientists chose as the" gold rush "or starting point for the first time. a new geological period nicknamed the Anthropocene or "the age of man".

In search of answers, environmentalists are turning to climate change for inspiration. "We need a new global agreement for nature," said Lambertini, highlighting two key ingredients of the Paris climate treaty, which brings together 195 countries. "One was to realize that climate change was dangerous for the economy and society, not just polar bears," he said.

Similarly, he said, threatening long-overdue ecosystem services – drinking water, breathable air, heat-absorbing oceans, CO2-absorbing forests, productive soils worth tens of billions of years. dollars a year.

"A healthy and sustainable future for all is possible only on a planet where nature is flourishing and where forests, oceans and rivers abound … Lambertini

The Paris Agreement, Negotiated in the context of the UN Convention on Climate Change, also set a clear goal: global warming should be kept "well below" 2 ° C and 1.5 ° C, if possible. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), on the other hand, has many targets for 2020 that are not only too low, but – with one possible exception – are unlikely to be met, declared Lambertini, 19659002] "The CBD fails," he declared AFP But a forthcoming meeting of this body composed of 195 nations could be the beginning of a "revolution" that will see the Convention redrafted in 2020 as "a new agreement d for Nature "v, n, t, s) {if (f.fbq) returns; n = f.fbq = function () {n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply (n, arguments): n.queue.push (arguments)}; if (! f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.push = n; n.loaded =! 0; n.version = 2.0 & # 39 ;; n.queue = []; t = b.createElement (e); t.async =! 0;
t.src = v; s = b.getElementsByTagName (e) [0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore (t, s)} (window,
document, "script", https: //connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq (& # 39 ;, & quot; 482038382136514 & quot;);
fbq ("track", "Pageview");
[ad_2]
Source link