Wildlife is disappearing around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is perhaps the most straightforward: Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before.
Biodiversity — or all the variety of life on the planet, including plants, invertebrates and ocean species — is declining at rates unprecedented in human history, according to the leading intergovernmental scientific panel on the subject. The group’s projections suggest that 1 million species are threatened with extinction, many within decades.
This week and next, nations are meeting in Montreal to negotiate a new agreement to address staggering declines in biodiversity. The future of many species hangs in the balance.
“If the forest disappears, they will disappear,” said Walter Jetz, a professor of biodiversity science at Yale University who leads Map of Life, a platform that combines satellite imaging with ecological data to determine how species ranges are changing around the world. Map of Life shared data with The New York Times.
The meeting in Montreal is intended to chart a different path. Delayed two years because of the pandemic, delegations are working to land a new, 10-year agreement to tackle biodiversity loss under a United Nations treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity.
“With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in his opening remarks last week in Montreal.
The last global biodiversity agreement failed to meet a single target at the global level, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity itself, and wildlife populations continue to plummet.
It’s not only wildlife that will suffer as a result. Biodiversity loss can trigger ecosystem collapse, scientists say, threatening humanity’s food and water supplies. Alarm is growing that the threat is comparable in significance to the climate crisis.
“Climate change presents a nearer-term threat to the future of human civilization,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a prominent climate change researcher who also focuses on biodiversity as chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “The biodiversity crisis presents a longer-term threat to the viability of the human species.”
Scientists emphasize that one can’t be solved without the other because they are interconnected. The human population has doubled since 1970. Although the rate of population growth is slowing, the sheer number of people continues to rise. Consumption levels in different parts of the world mean some people put more pressure on nature. In the United States, for example, each person uses the equivalent of 8 global hectares on average, according to the Global Footprint Network, a nonprofit research group. In Nigeria, it’s about 1 hectare per person.
All that is related to the causes of biodiversity loss. For the best chance at adapting to climate change, plants and animals need robust populations and room to migrate. Instead, they are depleted and hemmed in.
Why are people taking over so much land? Mostly for agriculture. In many parts of the world, that means exports driven by booming global trade. In recent decades, for example, Southeast Asia has become a major supplier of coffee, timber, rice, palm oil, rubber and fish to the rest of the world.
“All of that economic expansion has come at the cost of biodiverse habitat,” said Pamela McElwee, an environmental anthropologist at Rutgers University who studies the region.
Some momentum is building for companies to ensure that their products are deforestation-free. Reducing meat consumption and food waste are key to freeing up land for other species, McElwee said.
Recognition is growing that stanching biodiversity loss requires addressing the needs of local communities. “There needs to be a way that the people that live close to the forests benefit from the intact forests, rather than clearing the forest for short term gain,” said Julia Patricia Gordon Jones, a professor of conservation science at Bangor University in Wales. “That’s the ultimate challenge of forest conservation globally.”
“You can set up a protected area, but you’ve not dealt with the fact that the whole reason you had habitat loss in the first place is because of demand for land,” McElwee said. “You have to tackle the underlying drivers. Otherwise, you’re only dealing with like half the problem.”
