The Living Planet Report, WWF’s flagship publication released every two years is a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet. The Living Planet Report 2020 is the 13th edition of the report and provides the scientific evidence to back what nature has been demonstrating repeatedly: unsustainable human activity is pushing the planet’s natural systems that support life on Earth to the edge.
Through multiple indicators, including the Living Planet Index (LPI), provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), it shows an average 68% fall in almost 21,000 wildlife populations between 1970 and 2016.
The report calls on world leaders to come together to build a more sustainable, resilient, and healthy post COVID-19 world for people and nature.
For two decades, the Living Planet Index (LPI) has provided a measure for changes in biodiversity that has helped inform the global debate on the nature loss crisis. The LPI tracks almost 21,000 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians around the world. The thousands of individual population trends are brought together to calculate the average percentage change in population sizes using an index. The percentage does not represent the number of individual animals lost; instead, it reflects the average change in animal population sizes.
The 2020 global Living Planet Index shows an average 68% fall in monitored vertebrate species populations between 1970 and 2016. The data is gathered from almost 4,000 sources, using increasingly sophisticated technology such as audio devices to monitor insect sounds; drones and satellite tagging to track populations on the move; and even block chain technology to track the impact of harvesting on wild populations. (Cook, B. 2018).
For a long time, it was still possible to say, “more science is needed” to understand how exactly human activities were harming the natural world. Not anymore. ****Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increasingly destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands, wetlands and other important ecosystems.
The most significant direct driver of biodiversity loss in terrestrial systems in the last several decades has been food production, primarily the conversion of pristine native habitats into agricultural systems. Globally, climate change is projected to become the most significant driver of biodiversity loss in coming decades. Changing land use for food production is the biggest driver of nature loss. About 50% of the world’s habitable land area is already used for agriculture – for livestock such as cattle and pigs and for crops that feed both people and livestock.
The Cerrado region in South America has the richest diversity of life of any savannah in the world, is an important water source, and stores carbon that would otherwise accelerate climate change. Sadly, half of the region has already been lost to livestock rearing and soy production for consumption around the world. What is even more alarming is that globally, 1/3 of all food produced is wasted.
Healthy rivers, lakes and wetlands provide huge benefits to people around the world – for farming, industry, drinking water and more. In addition, they are a home for around 1 in 10 known animals. Despite all this, freshwater biodiversity is declining far faster than that in our oceans or forests. In fact, there is has been 84% decline in freshwater population size since 1970. One in three freshwater species are threatened with extinction. Habitat breakdown through pollution and changes made to the flow of rivers and lakes, together with overexploitation and mining are just some of the threats facing freshwater species.