New report shows vertebrate biodiversity is plummeting worldwide

I have previously shared with you stories about how human activity clears forests at a rate of 27 soccer fields per minute and is decimating populations of orca whales, king penguins or coral reefs. Now, a new report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that 60% of all biodiversity among vertebrates is estimated to have been lost since 1970, with humankind the likely culprit.

The irony of humanity destroying the very thing that enables our continuing survival as an organized civilization is striking but not surprising anymore. As Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF, explains: "This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is. This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system."

First published in 1998, the Living Planet Index (LPI) is an estimator of global biodiversity that tracks more than 4000 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The baseline is set in the year 1970 because that's the earliest year for which we have enough data to build a reliable index value.

The report revealed that, since 1970, the LPI declined by around 23% in the Nearctic region (roughly equivalent to North America), 31% in the Palearctic region (Eurasia and North Africa), 56% in the Afrotropical region (Sub-Saharan Africa), 64% in the Indo-Pacific region (Oceania, South East Asia and Southern Asia) and a whopping 89% in the Neotropics (Central and South America). This is troubling in light of the election of a fascist like Bolsonaro in Brazil, someone who, other than likely to oppress Amerindian people, LGBT+ people, poor people, black people and women, is set to declare open season on the Amazon forest to the delight of corporations.

Rivers and other freshwater systems are rich in biodiversity despite covering only a small fraction of the Earth's total surface (22% of the species analysed to calculate the LPI belonged to this category). Sadly, the freshwater LPI declined by around 83%, driven mainly by losses of fishes, amphibians and reptiles in the Neotropics, the Indo Pacific and the Afrotropics.

^{The latest LPI released shows vertebrate biodiversity has continued to plummet since 1970, falling 60% by 2014. Adapted from WWF. 2018. Living Planet Report - 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.}

Climate change and the sixth extinction

The LPI follows only vertebrate animals as they are easier to monitor and we have wealthier amounts of data available compared to other species, be them animals or not. This means the LPI is not a perfect gauge of total global biodiversity, but it is still a gargantuan worldwide effort that adds a lot of evidence to the already robust theory of the Sixth extinction, which is happening largely as a consequence of human activity. To put things in perspective, it was recently estimated that even if we were to stop the Sixth extinction today, it would take anywhere between 3 to 7 million years for new species of mammals to appear and replace the ones lost since the rise of modern humans (who have only been around for 0.1 to 0.2 million years).

We are pushing this extinction event primarily by causing habitat loss through pollution and farmland creation, followed by overexploitation (such as overfishing). These three (habitat loss, overexploitation and pollution) can of course also be linked directly or indirectly to climate change, which itself is further exacerbating the problem. For example, on top of pollution from plastics and many other chemicals, oceanic life has to deal with acidification and warming. Any number of species may be able to adapt as the generations go by to a particular pollutant, but adapting to multiple stressors at once is not so easy.

There are those who, when not outright denying science, love to claim that "the climate is always changing", but a changing climate is not necessarily the main problem, the main issue is the rate at which it's changing. Human activity is indeed driving climate change, but it's doing so at a rate that is too fast for us to cope with, not to mention the rest of Earth's lifeforms. Climate scientists Alan C. Mix and Katrin Meissner explained it better in a recent interview:

Dr Meissner: Did we survive something similar? I am not sure. As far as ice cores go back [currently, up to 2.7 million years ago], there is no episode with such rapid rates of increase in greenhouse gases. Before ice core records, the temporal resolution becomes more challenging, but even fast warming events seem to have happened on much slower timescales than what is happening today.

Dr Mix: It’s wrong to say that because climate has changed in the past, either we aren’t causing climate change, or it is no big deal and we will survive. Quite the contrary. The evidence of past change shows that climate can change pretty wildly, given even a little push. And we are pushing it pretty hard. Sure, humanity survived some past climate change, but at least during the “Holocene” time when agriculture developed and civilizations flourished, climate has been relatively stable. And the smallish changes that occurred had a pretty major impact of biblical proportion… famines, floods, mass migration, heat waves, killing frosts. So maybe we survived. But it wasn’t fun. And some civilizations collapsed. I don’t think we want that.

We are changing climate much more, and much faster, and on a much larger scale, than anything humanity experienced in its early history. I’m discounting the Neanderthals who lived in southern Europe during the ice ages — I don’t want to be a cave man and I don’t think we want to go there. Although we have modern technology that can help us, we also have nearly eight billion people on the planet, and we are already seeing daily crises with refugees. So if climate change makes a region of the planet uninhabitable, those people can’t just pick up and go somewhere else. There is no place to go on an overpopulated planet. What will we do when we see hordes of climate refugees fleeing rising sea levels flooding their cities, or crop failure from heat stress, or insufficient water? Who is responsible? Who will take them? The issue of surviving climate changes in the past is a red herring that says nothing about today.

Our current system is clearly unsustainable. A small group of billionaires and corporations gets to dictate over the rest of us in the workplace and continues to push us all towards climate catastrophe in their greed and complete disregard for market externalities. We need to move toward renewable forms of energy generation and sustainable consumption quickly and decisively.

In the WWF report, Marco Lambertini (director general of WWF international) says we have a choice:

We can be the founders of a global movement that changed our relationship with the planet, that saw us secure a future for all life on Earth, including our own. Or we can be the generation that had its chance and failed to act; that let Earth slip away.

And I think he's right, we still have a chance and a choice, if we act quickly. Voting for people who are not subservient to corporations is a good start but that's only the beginning. Mobilizing is not easy but it has become essential, especially for those of us who live in relative privilege. I'm sure there's a climate action group in your town or nearby city, join them and mobilize. You can always call your representative too, when the bastards feel enough people are threatening to vote them out of office come the next election they can be pushed to do the right thing. Corporations have the power of money but we outnumber them and the window of opportunity is closing fast.