A new road will reach the native community of Diamante this summer. It is a day that the indigenous Yine people have been praying for. 

The national government’s long awaited approval of this road marks the end of a three year battle between the community and environmentalists.

Surrounded by thick jungle, Diamante sits between two protected areas: Amarakaeri Communal Reserve and Manu National Park, the world’s top biodiversity hotspot. To reach the community, bulldozers are carving a way between these two reserves, opening the rainforest up to further illegal logging.

Deforestation and trafficking 

The road is predicted to cause over 40,000 hectares of deforestation: an area equivalent to the combined size of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

It will threaten the survival of indigenous people living in isolation and endangered wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. 

The road will also bring an increase in cocaine trafficking, deepening the humanitarian abuses that are already rife throughout the Madre de Dios region. 

So, why have Manu’s communities been campaigning for the road so fearlessly? 

Edgar Morales Gomez, the district mayor, said: “The road will bring water, communication, internet – so many things. Only with the road can we change our life. We cannot in another way because, in the end, we live forgotten by the state.” 

The community feel that their basic human rights are not being met: access to a good education, well-equipped medical centres, and clean running water. 

Miryam Lupaca Medina, a primary school teacher from Diamante, explained: “In primary I taught two children who have already left their studies. They only live with their grandparents and they can’t cover all their needs. So they have finished studying in order to go and look for money.” 

On 15 November 2018, the community of Diamante celebrated the approval of their new road. In the middle of the jungle, bulldozers were decorated with balloons, Latin pop music blared from speakers, and drinks were handed around. 

The crowd listened attentively to a rousing speech made by Luis Otsuka Salazar, the former regional governor: “Here I see this poverty that disgusts me, that outrageous me. 

“Other countries – of the Americans, the Japanese, the English, of all of the Europeans – how do they live? And how do our children live? Because you cannot knock down a tree here? You can’t open this road here?”

He added: “Fight for your children to have a quality of life, to live with dignity and pride to be Peruvian.”

The bulldozers moved in. The Amazonian trees fell.

This controversial extension of Manu Road is part of its steady advancement through the Biosphere Reserve since the 1950s.

Poor farmers from the Andes were encouraged to populate Manu; these ‘colonists’ were offered cheap land by the state to exploit the Amazon’s untapped natural resources. As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Manu Biosphere Reserve should be protected. In reality, illegal logging is rampant and uncontrolled. 

Once the trees are logged, the land is burnt and a monoculture of banana crops are grown, with the heavy use of pesticides. The soils are nutrient-poor and before long crops fail and the barren plot is abandoned. A new area must be logged and the agricultural frontier progresses deeper into untouched jungle. 

Encouraged to become farmers, indigenous communities were promised that they too would prosper from agriculture as the road advanced. This has failed to happen. 

Mateo Augusto Mavite, leader of the native community of Shipetiari, who have had road access for over three years, said: “Farming still isn’t commercial. We have to have a market.”

Despite this, the community of Diamante – an hour’s boat ride downriver – still believe the promises made by charismatic politicians.

Gloria Palma Mormontoi, community leader of Diamante, said: “When it arrives we will be able to leave with our produce. It’s going to create economic movement – with a little of that we can sustain a family.” 

The community of Shintuya are still struggling to make a living through farming, even a 50-year-old  road connection. Miguel Visse said: “There is almost a permanent market, but we sell to intermediaries, which is difficult.”

Often refusing to pay a fair price, intermediaries control the market and make it unprofitable. Miguel added: “Because the price is low sometimes we are forced to work with timber, with extracting trees.” 

Forced to continue logging to make a living, Shintuya are still waiting for the better life promised through road connection.

Victoria Corisepa said: “The road has been here 50 years and we have not seen a good benefit. In fact, we are losing our customs so the community is trying to rescue our culture, our identity, our respect.”

People in Diamante still fear losing their culture and territory, despite being pro-road. Eduardo Pancho Pizarro said: “People from Diamante don’t know how to benefit. But colonist people – woooh! – they really know how to.”

Due to their desperate economic situation the community are already selling timber and logging rights to colonists at an unsustainably low price. 

The road has failed to improve the livelihoods and living standards of indigenous communities in Manu because empowering local people has never been its true intention.

Corisepa said: “The road is not for the benefit of communities. It’s for the benefit of big business.” 

During Otsuka’s speech, it became clear why he wanted the road: “In this sub-soil there are millions of dollars. 

“The other day I was talking to Petroperú and [they said …] this is where the main concentration of gas is passing.” In Peruvian law, it is illegal to build a road to explore for oil or gas. This road has a long history of skirting the thin line of legality and Otsuka is shrouded in controversy. 

Before being elected as governor, Otsuka was president of the Mining Federation of Madre de Dios (Fedemin). In the Madre de Dios region, 90 percent of the gold mining is illegal and is a hotbed of modern day slavery, especially the trafficking of women and girls into sex work. The final destination of the new road is the epicentre of illegal gold mining. 

Although the full extension of this road has yet to be approved, campaigners are confident. Morales said:  “It’ll be easier because there’s no-one preventing it. What has prevented us here is Manu National Park and Amarakaeri Communal Reserve; we are breaking the heart. That is why it has been a lot of trouble. Down there, it’s not the same.” 

The road has penetrated the heart of Manu and now its advancement appears unstoppable. Not only does it threaten the region’s natural and cultural heritage, it also brings an increase in drug trafficking. 

Many colonists who settled in Manu, initially to log and farm, later turn to coca as an alternative cash crop due to a lack of economic options. Although in general decline nationwide, coca production in the Madre de Dios region has increased by 52 percent. 

In Diamante, people fear that they will get caught up in drug trafficking. Waldir Gomez Zorrillo said: “They could make us accomplices. The army, when they catch you, they catch you innocently because they think you’re working. They blame us. It’s us who pay.” 

Despite this, Diamante is willing to overlook all the threats posed by the road; they are desperate for change and believe there is no other way to improve their lives. 

For decades, indigenous communities in Manu have been promised a road and over generations it has become a deeply entrenched symbol of hope.

Researcher Eduardo Salazar Moreira said: “There has been a lot of time for these ideas and these aspirations to change, to evolve. They go deep inside the minds of people. They are totally legitimate necessities and expectations […] The issue comes when people hope that the road will bring them all this.”

Under the guise of empowerment, indigenous people’s desperation has been used by corrupt politicians who profit from the black market economy.

Oscar Guadalupe Zevallos, director of human rights organisation Asociación Huarayo, said: “We have a state that doesn’t worry about the employment of people. They play with people’s natural desire; they sell us roads, but they don’t sell us development.

“How are we going to use this tool – the road – to improve the family economically, to improve the education of our children?”

The Peruvian government has green-lighted the construction of numerous new roads across this Amazon region, declaring them to be“a national priority”. 

The most major of these roads is predicted to cause 680,000 hectares of deforestation in primary rainforest – an area the size of the country of Samoa. 

Based on the experiences of people in Manu, the roads will bring environmental and cultural devastation, with little to no improvement in livelihoods or living standards.

Guadalupe asked: “Development for what? For who? This is the question we are constantly asking ourselves.

“We are going to witness families destroyed. Natural resources destroyed. The world destroyed. This will not just have a local impact, this is going to have an impact in other parts of the planet. That is our concern.” 

This Author 

Bethan John is a freelance multimedia journalist and team member of a film expedition that journeyed to Manu at the end of 2018. They are producing a documentary to give a voice to indigenous communities, which will launch this summer. Follow the story as it unfolds. 

Twitter @voicesontheroad

Instagram @voicesontheroadfilm

Facebook @voicesontheroadfilm

I’m writing this from my little desk in my children’s ‘reading room’ (where we also keep the xbox). I’m surrounded by their books, piled up on shelves, scattered on the floor. Brave Bitsy and the Bear gawps at me as I tap at the keyboard and, if I glance out of the window, I can see a picture perfect view of spring in rural Cornwall.

This morning I read about the collapse of the insect population, decimation of soil productivity and saw — for the fifth (or is it sixth?) time — someone share that post by academic Marc Doll about how woefully positive the narrative on climate change is that we’ve been given by the IPCC.

And in the room next door, my four-year-old (who wants to be a dog) and seven-year-old (who wants to be a marine biologist or live in Minecraft, I can’t be sure which) are fast asleep. Personally speaking, it’s hard not to feel worried and stressed about climate change.

Dystopian nightmare

For most of the summer last year I carried round this edgy feeling, a sense I was already living in a dystopian nightmare.

Somewhere inside me I think I’d already given up. Resigned myself to the collapse of civil society and eradication of so much of life on earth.

Along with this, a sense that I’d been deeply irresponsible bringing my children into such a world.

Given that you’ve chosen to read this, I wouldn’t be surprised you have experienced or are going through something similar.

The reason I’m writing is that I feel that I’ve come to a different place with it all, and I want people to know that the narratives we’re sharing and behaviours we’re encouraging in each other are potentially working against us.

Bombarded by facts

What I want to tell you might be difficult to read. It might be triggering. And if it is, that’s probably a good thing.

What I want to tell you is that the anxiety we’re producing for ourselves — while it feels very much justified — could be a symptom of everything we’ve been doing ‘wrong’ and is making things worse.

The alternative isn’t inaction but instead wiser action. Hear me out.

Many of us are being constantly bombarded by facts, figures and narratives that tell us our days on earth are numbered, that it’s our fault and that it’s also largely out of our control.

This is impossible for any human being to process and still remain calm. Things that present a threat trigger us into a stressed state. When we feel helpless in the face of that threat, everything gets much worse for us.

In this stressed state we change physiologically — we become more problem-focused and look for other people or things to blame.

Consumption and stress

This is a function of our evolutionary development. In more precarious times it’s been critical in keeping us alive but in this instance it’s not helping.

When we enter this state we are incapable of thinking creatively or compassionately. We look for quick fixes, easy solutions and bad guys.

We also want to consume more. We crave salt, sugar, fat, simple carbs. We’re not hungry it’s just that our bodies are gearing up for the fight or the flight.

As a result of these changes, none of us are fit to act wisely. We haven’t got a hope of addressing complex problems or creating a future fit for everyone.

The difficulty is that in this state we feel utterly compelled to act. The function of the state is to deal with the perceived problem — to flood our bodies with stress hormones so that we can do whatever it takes to make it go away.

Engineering stress

The sneaky thing is that we might not even realise that this is going on, because we’ve got so used to it.

It’s not just the obvious, adrenaline-infused headspins I’m talking about, triggered by a stranger shouting abuse or being chased by a dog.

What I’m seeing all around me is people operating at a low level of stress and anxiety, triggered by perpetual busyness and information overload.

It’s almost like our lives are being engineered this way. Cuts to benefits, dismantling free healthcare, Government openly allowing the majority of wealth to be passed on to those who are already most wealthy.

And we seem to be ‘happily’ participating in making life more stressful — busying ourselves into the ground, glorying in our busyness and our achievements from it. Actively choosing to consume news that makes us angry and fearful.

Existential threats

This news now includes a constant feed of existential threats, taking many of us to an extreme level of baseline stress.

Given the challenge we’re facing — one that’s complex, systemic and long-term, if we carry on acting from this place we’re going to really screw it up. Not because we’re stupid or bad, but because we’re on the wrong setting.

Climate change and the destruction of our ecosystems seem to be the result of persistent, rampant over-consumption. This is because our modern society is a consumer society. It’s based on one simple idea: that consuming will meet your needs.

We’re educated to work, so we can earn money, so we can pay for things things so that we create jobs, so people can work… and so on.

To keep this going we’re told that if we don’t consume the products and services offered to us then life will be more uncertain and we’ll be less than we need to be — loveable, sexy, successful.

Increasing consumption 

Once upon a time religion and spirituality would have played a more active role in our lives and, at its best it would have reassured us that ‘you are enough, you are loved, have faith’.

Conveniently religion has been made the enemy of rationality and the domain of nutjobs, so consumerism has helpfully stepped in to take its place and shore us all up against our insecurities.

Its message is instead: you are not enough, you are not loved, there is no reason to have faith but — lucky for you —here are some things you can buy to make you feel better.

Some of them we know are bad for us: smoking, alcohol, fatty, processed foods. Others we think are harmless but still serve to numb us: Netflix boxsets, gym subscriptions, smartphones.

And some masquerade as the answer but are really just part of the same system — insurance policies, private healthcare and the multi-billion dollar ‘wellness’ industry.

None of these things can or will ever meet our unmet needs for love, connection or trust in the world so we continue consuming, throwing more things into the bottomless pit inside.

False binary

We try and do it consciously. New industries pop up to give us what we want without the guilt — sustainably sourced, vegan, fairtrade — but even aside from the minefield that is working out whether it’s really ‘sustainable’, it’s still built on the same system.

A system built on a disconnection from your needs, that can never leave you satisfied with who you are and the world around you. We’re being led to believe that the society we’ve built has to ‘collapse’ if we’re to save the world.

The message is that all the things you rely on to keep you safe: jobs, booze, Netflix, specialty coffee, vegan sausage rolls are no longer part of a viable future fit for everyone.

The sense is that when these things disappear, life will be unbearable. That we’re going to turn on each other.

We’re presented with a binary choice — save the planet and live a miserable existence, or accept that some populations (plant, animal, human) will have to act as collateral damage to ensure a quality of life that vaguely resembles our current one.

Dismantling the lie

I believed this until a good friend of mine, Charles Davies, said: “The more we let go of, the more truthful we are, the closer to nature and reality — and our own creativity — that we get, the more beautiful life becomes.

“This whole thing of it being ‘a trade-off’ or ‘tough choices’ is based on our current lifestyle being awesome and the future being a kind of worthy ascetic hardship. And that story needs to be stabbed in the head.”

And I thought: Dammit, he’s right. We’re being fed — and feeding each other— a lie.

The lie is not that we won’t have to radically change the way we live, or that many people (some of the most vulnerable) will experience severe economic hardship and loss.

The lie is that the future *has* to be worse than the present from the perspective of human experience. The lie is that letting go of our current way of living is a bad thing.

How about we dismantle that lie?

Models of disconnection

In my experience we seem to be more unhappy than ever before. More physically and mentally ill. More divided than ever. More stressed about our impact on the world. And yet we are told that taking apart the trappings of the world that create these outcomes is a bad thing.

We tell each other almost gleefully: you need to be scared! This way of life we have can’t go on! Be scared? Who on earth wants this way of life to go on??

Our current model of relating and cooperating is built on a model of disconnection. We are educated and co-erced into disconnecting from our needs in order to be good participants in a consumer society.

And – as I was reminded in a conversation Brendan Montague, editor of The Ecologist – it’s this disconnection from ourselves that leads to the disconnection from each other that in turn leads to disconnection from our environment — which is the only thing that has enabled us to create the extractive, destructive system we have in place.

Disconnected from your needs. Seeing others as threats or problems to be dealt with. Walking around with a tightness in your chest because you feel the world our kids are growing up in is being trashed. Numbing ourselves with dopamine hits from glass screens between consuming things we don’t need to make ourselves feel semi-satisfied for five minutes.

Connection 

No. What meets our needs is connection. Connection to ourselves, to others and the world around us.

Feeling at home in our own skin, having meaningful relationships and being friendly with our neighbours.

Creating things that feel like they matter, with like-minded people. Being in natural environments, caring for living things.

These are what help us sleep at night, that make us feel whole. They are also the enemy of consumer society, which is why it’s evolved to reduce their prevalence in our lives.

When we get these needs met we stop throwing endless consumer products, services and experiences into the void that can’t be filled. And when we stop doing that, we start creating a different kind of world together.

Personal choices 

I’m not saying that we don’t also need to make clear and difficult choices about the lives we live. 

Personally I turned down two jobs last year because they were with companies that were involved in promoting consumerism in an active way. I’m self-employed and so is my partner. I earn nearly half of what I did a few years ago working in take-every-job-that-comes-along-regardless-of-what-they-do-because-I-am-a-freelancer mode.

We don’t always meet our overheads. It can seem pretty precarious (financially speaking) at times.

But two things make this a choice that I can stand firm with. Firstly, this way of life has put me firmly back in the role of active parent and community member. I’m more available for my kids, I’m more involved in their lives. I volunteer at the local school and I help to run wilderness sessions for Dads and kids some weekends.

Nothing money could buy will give me what this gives me.

Secondly, I have found that in order to do anything different requires me to disconnect from my needs again. It takes a kind of energy that I’m no longer willing to spend. My kids and my neighbours can have that instead.

Capacity and creativity 

I’m not for a second judging anyone else’s choices. We’re all doing the best we can to get our needs met.

There are reasons I’m able to do this and others might not, and there are many (many) things about my life which I know are very unsound, ecologically speaking.

Given all this, ‘concious consumerism’ and ‘green new deals’ will never offer the solution we need if they are built on the fundamental idea of citizen is as consumer, working to earn, earning to spend, spending to consume etc.

I think the fundamental answer lies instead in rebuilding our lives around connection. This has to start with coming down from our persistent, stressed state.

If we are facing complex, systemic challenges we need to be able to bring our full capacity and creativity.

We need to be able to see and hold multiple perspectives, cross divides and have healthy conflict.

Subversive acts

None of this is possible if we continue to stoke the fires of stress and anxiety in ourselves and each other.

My invitation is to recognise that any time you’re looking for quick solutions, or people to blame that you’ve lost your way.

To see that looking after your mental health, staying calm, being open-hearted is the most subversive act of our time.

Recognise that if you would love other people to live in a certain way or see the world from a different perspective, this is only going to happen if they sense you’re not judging them to be wrong.

Know that the thing that’s most firmly under your control is how you show up for your children, your neighbours and your wider community.

Winning the fight 

This rules nothing out — from this place we can still protest, dismantle, subvert.

You might still feel this is far too measured: “There’s a fight on our hands — a fight for our children’s future! How can you be so irresponsible?”

As a martial artist, ex-doorman and someone who’s been in a few violent confrontations I can tell you with certainty that if there is a fight, it’s not the angry, anxious person who wins.

It’s the person who is very, very calm. Who is totally present and has no sense of wanting to hurt you. They are very comfortable using whatever means necessary but without malice or pleasure, simply because it gets everyone to a better place.

I can already see a growing recognition that connection, inclusion, creativity and celebration are the keys to a genuinely better future.

New society

You can see it in the best of the climate protests — garden bridges, calm nonviolent protest , dancing police officers. And in the growing popularity of secular spiritualism and spaces for new ways of relating (like circling and real relating).

People are slowly but steadily finding that their real needs are met more consistently in self-awareness and relationship than they are in quick fix consumption.

We can’t all join a five-day protest and we’re not all ready to sit in a circle and talk about our feelings but that’s not what’s being asked of us.

The invitation is to start building the new society from inside each of us.

Resisting the urge of distraction and consumption, rejecting the voices (inside and out) calling for us to divide ourselves, not taking in any more information that will stress us out.

Genuine willingness

Instead showing up to each conversation with family, neighbours and community with genuine willingness to engage in something different, knowing that it’s one of the most likely paths to a better future.

To be a calm, loving human, raising calm, loving kids (if you have them) and fostering a calm, loving society.

Even if that means dismantling a load of stuff in the process.

This Author 

Max St John shows people how to get clear on what they’re doing, how they’ll get it done and how to deal with any conflict that shows up along the way.

Image: Taber Andrew Bain, Flickr. 

Recently, I saw a headline in The Telegraph: “The climate protesters seeking a return to a pre-industrial age would doom us to lives of misery”. The article explains how economic growth is not a problem, but rather the solution to global warming.

After opening the article by criticising the lack of self-sacrifice by two Extinction Rebellion protesters whom he witnessed buying a bottle of wine (not allowed in the “lives of misery” he expects of climate protesters), he goes on to explain that their goal is the “almost wholly unrealistic” one of reaching zero emissions within five years. 

Environmentalists, he says, believe that the pursuit of economic growth is the root of our current problems. But, if there are solutions he says, they lie “not in taking a step back in time to a by-gone, pre-industrial age”, but rather in more growth and technology.

Beyond money

The Telegraph reporter adamants that we do need to “tame” the destructive outputs of industrialisation that threaten our world, but only by increasing incentives around economic improvement: “We undermine and ridicule the pursuit of economic advancement at our peril.” 

I want to share a few thoughts on this narrative, and to question why economic growth is framed as a value that we should aspire to. 

I’ve recently been in Kenya and in Tanzania with Arukah Network, working with two groups (‘Clusters’) of community and organisational leaders who come together and collaborate by sharing ideas, encouragement, resources, information, services and more.

In various ways, Clusters aim to move beyond depending on unpredictable outside help and instead, to better understand and share the strengths present in their communities in order to solve the challenges they face and ultimately, to improve their health, wellbeing and happiness. 

I’ve also helped out with a couple of Repair Cafés in the UK, like this one in Manchester. These are occasional volunteer-run events to which community members can take along broken household goods and get them fixed, for free. The cafés build community relationships, reduce the amount of stuff that goes to landfill, and share valuable repair and maintenance skills. 

Collaboration and wellbeing 

Neither of these initiatives – Clusters, or Repair Cafés – require much money to run. But they create connectedness, collaboration and wellbeing which in turn reduce the burden on planet and society. My allotment does this too.

They contribute to solving some of the challenges we face without pursuing economic advancement as a goal. In fact, Repair Cafés actively reduce money being spent in the economy because material goods get repaired rather than replaced.

They reduce GDP. And yet it is clear that they contribute to an improved world. 

We cannot eat money, or live in money, or expect money to listen to our heart and comfort us. Money is a commodity to – if we are lucky – spend on the things that we decide will bring us greater security, choice, wellbeing, happiness.

But Clusters and Repair Cafés – and even my allotment – show me that there are other ways to generate those things, too. 

Hope or optimism

Whilst economic growth gets held up as a goal, or worse, a value – the denial of which is subtly framed as unpatriotic – there is another value; hope, that is sometimes framed as childish, naïve, unserious.

Another article about Extinction Rebellion in The Telegraph said “…scarier still is young voters’ capacity for hope: that they can look at the same world we do and be optimistic enough to believe they can change it.” 

A capacity for hope is not the same as being optimistic. Hope takes work, and bravery, because like faith, it goes beyond circumstances we can see. It believes that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, even though there may be setbacks and even if we don’t get to see the outcome. Optimism can wear blinkers; it believes things will turn out well despite evidence to the contrary. 

I’ve been involved in marches against things, and for things. I was unable to join the Extinction Rebellion protests. Frankly, I’m actually not very good at this kind of action – though I believe it is necessary.

I believe too that we should identify our personal strengths and capacities, and contribute these towards building the world we want to see. We do not all need to do everything. We do not need to feel guilty if we cannot protest.

Common ground

We do not even need to call ourselves an ‘environmentalist’ if that media-warped word does not reflect our complexity.

To care about our planet does not require we join certain tribes, or wear certain clothes, or adopt certain labels. To care about our planet requires we live wholeheartedly as if this is the case.

It requires we talk about our common ground and use this as a starting place into which to pour our unique identity and strengths. And it requires we find some kind of hope to fuel it. 

Hope, and the desire (and action) to create a new narrative, is like kryptonite to the voices that tell us we are unpatriotic when we stand against business as usual and for a different story.

Rejecting business as usual is not the same as being deluded, irrational, or unpatriotic. It means we think there is a new way and though we cannot describe it yet, we are willing to use our messy, wine-buying, hope-carrying imperfect selves to bring it about. 

Prosperous society

Lastly, it feels important to decouple the idea of moving away from a carbon-powered society from a move towards a life of “misery”. This is not about moving backwards, but about coming together to create a new vision of where ‘forward’ should take us.

My idea of forwards is not to return to a pre-industrial way of life. My idea of forwards is to create new languages for collaboration rather than competition.

My idea of forward is of individuals, communities and societies flourishing and prospering in a way that recognises and regenerates the Earth’s finite resources. The word ‘prosper’ comes from the latin prosperare, meaning ‘cause to succeed, render happy’, and traditionally from Old Latin pro spere, meaning ‘according to one’s hope’. There’s that hope, again.

Imagine if a ‘prosperous’ society was one collectively working towards a happy, hopeful, just vision – and not increased GDP. 

Whether or not we joined the Extinction Rebellion protests, they give us an opportunity to take stock of our strengths and values. And they give energy and a hope that has been scarce. 

          History says, Don’t hope 

          On this side of the grave, 

          But then, once in a lifetime 

          The longed-for tidal wave 

          Of justice can rise up 

          And hope and history rhyme.

                     From Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy.

This Author

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, a contributing editor at The Ecologist, and co-leads the community development charity Arukah Network. You can find her on Twitter @LizWainwright.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Representatives from the world’s governments are gathered in Paris to finalise negotiations over the text of a UN report that will deliver a comprehensive assessment of the state of our global biodiversity, the life support system that we all rely on to survive and thrive.

The report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is the first of its kind and represents the most current knowledge we have on the health of the planet. The previous report launches that inform this Global Assessment have been attended by Heads of State, first in Malaysia and then in Colombia.

But at the opening of the plenary discussions for this landmark report, we saw muted opening ceremony, with no-one from the hosting French Ministries in attendance, and certainly no Head of State.

Critical moment

What hope do we have when have to take actions if these discussions are not treated with requisite importance?

This would have been a very welcome moment for France to signal its position on these issues to the world, given the increasing public anger over governments’ lack of action on environmental issues, and the anticipated bad news contained within the Assessment on species extinction, forest loss, climate change and impacts to indigenous peoples and the global south in particular.

The IPBES report comes at a critical moment, ahead of the IPCC Land report in August, and off the back of increasing public and media scrutiny in the state of the natural world.

The report will be adopted ahead of an important year for both climate and biodiversity issues, and will inform the discussions on a new framework and targets to reverse nature loss at the UN Biodiversity conference in 2020 in Kunming, China.

It is reasonable that some of the stark warnings and policy tools contained in SR15 will be echoed in the IPBES report, following the IPCC 1.5 Special Report last October, and given the shared drivers behind climate change and biodiversity loss.

Continued inaction

We know the global south will be hit first and worst by continued inaction on biodiversity loss, just as with climate change.

We are not on track to meet the Paris Agreement and the SDGs will be compromised by our collective lack of movement.

The food system – production and consumption – is a key driver of biodiversity loss and also one of the highest emitters of GHGs – it accounts for one third of GHG emissions and big agricultural corporations are responsible for almost as much emissions as the fossil fuel industry and 27 percent of global forest loss can be attributed to deforestation to make way for the growing of commodity crops.

But we have many of the solutions we need to tackle these linked crises and there are a series of no regrets actions we can and should be taking now.

We know that local and indigenous communities are often the best guardians of forests, which are vital in the fight to decarbonise our society. The pathways laid out in the IPCC 1.5 report make it clear that not only do we need to protect existing forests, we also need to actively restore other ecosystems (such as wetlands, mangrove swamps) and consider giving over land to planting new forests. We also know that empowering smallholders is the best way to feed the world fairly, and with the most positive outcome for how we manage stewardship of the land.

Future impacts

We need transformative change of our society and this needs to start now if we are to minimise future impacts.

No government is currently close to doing enough, which brings us back to France and our hopes that we see more intent and action from a country more usually known as a champion for the environment.

It is a busy time for the host nation. As well as the IPBES-7 plenary, France is presiding over the G7 in 2019, with the Environmental Ministers meeting set to take place in Metz, France, on the 5 and 6 of May – overlapping with the IPBES report launch.  

We hope to see more leadership from France over these coming days. We ask the country to show leadership not just at IPBES-7 but also in the G7 environment ministerial, in prioritising biodiversity loss and championing nature.

From the Amazon, we say to the scientists and officials gathered in France once again: there is no more time, the Pachamama is in danger.

Everyone’s opportunity

There have already been enough discussions, reports and forums. The time for talking is over. 

Communities around the world need to see governments starting to attach budgets to their rhetoric. We need to act now, and France must keep its word, and set an example to other countries.

It is time to know the truth, and act in truth of justice. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples has the answer to the almost terminal crisis of the planet.

This is the opportunity for our indigenous peoples and peasant communities to save the planet with our knowledge. Because our opportunity is everyone’s opportunity.

This Author

Gregorio Mirabel is president of COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin).

Climate activists Extinction Rebellion need to think global, act local to meet its ambitious aim of reducing the country’s carbon emissions to zero by 2025 through direct action. This means taking on capitalism and big business by building support in local communities.

This is the advice from more than 50 subscribers to The Ecologist newsletter who responded to the question ‘what should XR do next?’ on Friday, and ahead of today’s announcement that Michael Gove, the environment minister, will meet representatives from the group.

The question was posed after a poll showed that 90 percent of newsletter subscribers fully supported XR following its shutdown of central London, and its direct actions across towns and cities in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Big business

“Call out the real beast which is the economic system of neoliberal capitalism,” proposed John Otvos, 71, a retired loudspeaker manufacturer from Woodville, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was among 15 respondents (or 29 percent) who wanted capitalism or big business to be the target of XR actions.

Martin Davies, 59, retired from Milton Keynes was among those arrested during the actions in London. He said XR should “widen and scale up civil disobedience as much as possible including a general strike.”

Gerður Pálmadottir, a lifelong entrepreneur from Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, wants the group to “demand a return to the origin and purpose of economics, which was to make a system enabling all members of society to thrive together on the gifts of earth and the returns of hard work.

He added: “The soft measure to reach that is to demand a Unconditional Basic Income on earth. It will free a lot of people from useless work and steer them into purpose fulfillment, such as re-greening the earth. Teaming up with Earth in order to avoid our own extinction is a purpose worth striving for.”

Felicity Radford, 71, a retired librarian from Bristol, was arrested at the XR protests and was also among the respondents who wanted to target big business. “They should target ecocidal companies to warn them that their time is up unless they change their policies,” she said, adding: “Then, after a pause to see how the government responds, do another massive occupation of London if necessary.”

Ecocides

Margarette Green, 69, from Devizes, wants to “lobby the banks to divest fossils and regenerate forests” while Jill Bruce, 68, the Women’s Institute Climate Ambassador, wants to “avoid disrupting public transport” and instead “target businesses that are adding to the climate change problem”.

Lesley Grahame, 59, a nurse from Norwich, spoke for many when he said XR should “build capacity, target guilty corporations – fossil fuels, finance, big armaments.” Liz Jensen, a writer from Copenhagen, told The Ecologist: XR could invite the corporations causing the worst damage to imagine featuring in future school exam questions about Eco Criminals of History.”

Jim, a land manager from Co Clare in Ireland, said: “Focus on retail, polluting industries and intensive agricultural activities. The highlighting of the high nutrient and energy use by these sectors feeds into the wasteful consumption model of capitalism.

“The retail and online retailers should also be disrupted by protest. The high consumption model of wasteful resource use facilitated by and encouraged by advertising and branding of goods often created in states with poor labour and environmental safeguards, cannot often be highlighted in the countries of manufacture, they can however be highlighted at point of retail.”

Conor Mcdonald, 46, a property owner and manager from Liverpool, concluded: “Let’s start hitting companies and businesses that are committing ecocide. Name and shame. Hit their pockets. If we educate people and they in turn stop using these services, companies will have to change.”

Local action

There was also strong support for XR lobbying politicians to bring about change. The second key demand of the group is that the government should declare a climate emergency and introduce the radical target of reducing carbon emissions down to zero by 2025. They have secured meetings with Gove, while Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has ensured there will be a vote in the House of Commons.

Marion Winslow, 64, a psychotherapist from Reading, said: “Ask for a commitment from governments to do everything humanly possible to get a worldwide commitment to act in concert in directly reducing and then eliminating fossil fuel extraction as Mike Berners-Lee argues in his book There is No Planet B.

“Probably through effective use of carbon pricing combined with the ‘human technology’ of effective communication/Nonviolent Communication and the existing experts in global governance and its challenges. The proposals in the book could also be introduced into citizenship education in schools on a rapid timescale.”

Micheal Shea, 63, retired and living in Sydney, Australia, said that XR should “become more involved in the political process and in more political decision making, politics is responsible for the state the world is in [today].”

There was also a clear call for XR to focus on local action, and for its members and supporters to build vibrant, inclusive and creative groups in their own communities. Schools were also seen as an important space for winning hearts and minds.

Escalate

Rita Bouchard, 54, from Los Angeles, works in education and said: “Since most educators in some way, shape, or form know and care about climate change, the next thing XR should move on is creating discussion starters.

“The discussion / dialogue starters could be used to gauge student feelings about the climate and set into place inquiry projects where kids can think of solutions. The younger the kids the better, because most kids love the earth and all the organisms that share it. And they have not been so stifled [that they cannot] have creative solutions.

If climate change [action has a] sense of urgency for them, they won’t stop talking about the ideas they have. Teachers willing to implement a participatory curriculum will allow those ideas (however crazy) to be heard and give voice to those kids. This will set into action a praxis leading to self-generating self-motivating community that feels power to change “what is”…Who doesn’t love a youngster who wants to affect change!”

Jacquie Mercer, 59, a technical writer from Cambridge, said: “Could XR block the traffic in a different city each week, going around the country? Could XR be active with the school children who miss school on Fridays? Could campaigners offer to go into schools – on Fridays – to take part in lessons or hold meetings in breaks?”

Mark Keir, 59, a gardener from West Drayton, took part in the London actions and was among those who were arrested suggested that XR activists “take a breather from national actions to regenerate and to consider successes and failings, what to do better and how to escalate.

Marvellous

“Autumn might seem a good time for the next national action though we live in very fluid times. In the meantime, local actions should serve to keep us in the news and public awareness. Personally, I would like to see a revival of the Earth Marches but with direct interaction with communities on the way – such as the Extinction Speech, or engagement with local environmental and social care campaigns.”

The style and ethics of XR was also important to those who responded. There was a call for XR to “keep upping the ante in creative ways, stay loving, demonstrate a better way of being with others,” and also to “become more radical – in a good way.” Other respondents said the actions should be “peaceful” and “cause no harm”

More than 50 readers of The Ecologist gave their views to participate in this article. A total of 23 described themselves as members of XR, while 16 took place in the London direct actions. Three were arrested (and made clear they were happy to have this reported).

Carl Blumanthal, 58, a vet from South Africa, who took part in the London protests, captured the mood when he said XR must “not let up! I think what has been achieved is marvellous. It represents the beginning of the Great Turning. I hear the first creakings of the machine and feel hope… I feel the same glimmers of hope as when the end of Apartheid was nigh.”  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.