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posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the real-world-following-the-movies dept.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4

Up to one million plant and animal species face extinction, many within decades, because of human activities, says the most comprehensive report yet on the state of global ecosystems.

Without drastic action to conserve habitats, the rate of species extinction — already tens to hundreds of times higher than the average across the past ten million years — will only increase, says the analysis. The findings come from a United Nations-backed panel called the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

According to the report, agricultural activities have had the largest impact on ecosystems that people depend on for food, clean water and a stable climate. The loss of species and habitats poses as much a danger to life on Earth as climate change does, says a summary of the work, released on 6 May.

The analysis distils findings from nearly 15,000 studies and government reports, integrating information from the natural and social sciences, Indigenous peoples and traditional agricultural communities. It is the first major international appraisal of biodiversity since 2005. Representatives of 132 governments met last week in Paris to finalize and approve the analysis.

Biodiversity should be at the top of the global agenda alongside climate, said Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, at a 6 May press conference in Paris, France. "We can no longer say that we did not know," she said.

"We have never had a single unified statement from the world's governments that unambiguously makes clear the crisis we are facing for life on Earth," says Thomas Brooks, chief scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, who helped to edit the biodiversity analysis. "That is really the absolutely key novelty that we see here."


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:53PM (2 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:53PM (#854778) Journal

    Every species alters its environment in some way.

    Yep, Here you see beavers clear-cutting a forest and causing widespread flooding. [telegraph.co.uk]

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday June 13 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday June 13 2019, @12:13AM (#854931) Journal
    Yeah, beavers can do tremendous amounts of damage. Another good image to come to mind when dealing with someone who seems to think that all bad things are caused by people.
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    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday June 13 2019, @09:33AM

      by acid andy (1683) on Thursday June 13 2019, @09:33AM (#855055) Homepage Journal

      when dealing with someone who seems to think that all bad things are caused by people

      Who thinks that? Nobody here AFAICT and I don't think that was the point of TFA either.

      Yeah, beavers can do tremendous amounts of damage.

      Its a matter of scale. How many species are going extinct globally due to the activity of beavers (I'd suggest roughly none) versus humans. If beaver numbers exceeded the human population, more bad things would start happening but I seriously doubt it would approach the kind of damage human technology and profiteering can generate. We do have a very special talent for royally fucking everything up.

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