Living Planet Report 2024 Nature Collapse is Imminent !

RITURAJ PHUKAN

The 2024 Living Planet Report– A System in Peril, has revealed that wildlife populations have plummeted by 73% on average between 1970 and 2020.

Globally, freshwater populations of wildlife have suffered a 85% decline, followed by terrestrial and marine populations with 69% and 56% declines respectively.

Living Planet Report 2024 Nature Collapse is Imminent

The worst regional record was from Latin America and the Caribbean with a 95% decline followed by Africa with 76% and the Asia and the Pacific with 60% loss of wildlife populations. Habitat degradation and loss, driven primarily by our food system, is the most reported threat in each region, followed by overexploitation, invasive species, disease, climate change and pollution.

Now in its 15th edition, the report includes the Living Planet Index, which tracks how species populations have fared around the world over a 50 -year period. Published by the WWF in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, which manages The Living Planet Index (LPI), the data is based on almost 35,000 population trends and 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles.

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The LPI and other indicators reveal the extent of the crisis in the natural world as humans push the planet towards dangerous tipping points. These self-perpetuating, often abrupt and potentially irreversible changes could pose grave threats to humanity and most species, damaging Earth’s life-support systems and destabilize societies everywhere. Early warning signs indicate that several global tipping points are fast approaching.

In the biosphere, the mass die-off of coral reefs would destroy fisheries and storm protection for hundreds of millions of people living on the coasts. In the Great Barrier Reef, rising sea temperatures coupled with ecosystem degradation have caused 7 mass coral bleaching events since 1998. Although the Great Barrier Reef has shown remarkable resilience to date, between 70–90% of all coral reefs globally, including the Great Barrier Reef, will be lost even if we are able to limit climate warming to 1.5°C.

The Amazon rainforest tipping point would release tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere and disrupt weather patterns around the globe.

Already, deforestation and climate change in the Amazon are leading to reduced rainfall, and a tipping point could be reached where the environmental conditions become unsuitable for tropical rainforest, with devastating consequences for people, biodiversity and the global climate. A tipping point could be on the horizon if just 20–25% of the Amazon rainforest were destroyed and an estimated 14–17% has already been deforested.

In ocean circulation, the collapse of the subpolar gyre, a circular current south of Greenland, would dramatically change weather patterns in Europe and North America. In the cryosphere, the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would unleash many meters of sea level rise, while large-scale thawing of permafrost would trigger vast emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.

Despite the alarming overall decline in wildlife populations shown in the LPI, many populations have stabilized or increased as a result of conservation efforts. But isolated successes and merely slowing the decline of nature are not enough. Equally, conservation efforts that don’t take account of the rights, needs and values of people are not likely to succeed in the long run.

The report has been published at a crucial time, ahead of the UN biodiversity summit (COP16) in Cali, where the host country Colombia has declared its intention to push for a unified climate and biodiversity pledge, seeking to combine efforts to protect nature with those to tackle climate change in United Nations talks. It must be mentioned here that not a single biodiversity target in the history of UN agreements has been successfully met by governments.

Countries are meeting at Cali for the first time since the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) which has been called the “Paris Agreement” for its focus to stop biodiversity loss.

The GBF target 3 calls for 30% of lands, waters and sea to be protected by 2030, while Target 2 aims to restore 30% of degraded areas by 2030. This will scale protected areas that currently cover 16% of land and 8% of the planet’s oceans, providing an unmissable opportunity to scale up effective conservation to unprecedented levels.

The GBF target also allows for other effective area-based conservation measures, or OECMs. Supporting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities may be one of the most effective ways to conserve biodiversity at scale. A quarter of the global land area is traditionally owned, managed, used and/or occupied by Indigenous Peoples, which includes about 35% of the area formally in protected areas and 35% of the remaining intact terrestrial areas.

Nature-based solutions to address specific societal issues also holds great promise to advance on global goals on climate, nature and sustainable development. Nature-based solutions for climate mitigation have the potential to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 10–19%, while also benefiting ecosystems and improving livelihoods.

The report calls for transforming the global food system, which is inherently illogical. The prevalent food production system is destroying biodiversity, depleting the world’s water resources and changing the climate, but isn’t delivering the nutrition people need. Despite record production, some 735 million people go to bed hungry each night. Obesity rates are rising even as nearly a third of the world’s population don’t regularly get enough nutritious food.

Food production is one of the main drivers of nature’s decline: it uses 40% of all habitable land, is the leading cause of habitat loss, accounts for 70% of water use and is responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. The hidden costs of ill health and environmental degradation in the current food system amount to US$10–15 trillion annually, representing 12% of global GDP in 2020. Paradoxically, our food system is undermining our ability to feed humanity now and into the future.

The report calls for a faster, greener and fairer transformation of the energy system. The way we produce and consume energy is the principal driver of climate change, with increasingly severe impacts on people and ecosystems. We know we must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy to cut greenhouse emissions in half by 2030 and keep 1.5ºC within reach. The energy transition must be fast, green and fair, putting people and nature at its heart.

The Living Planet Report also called for transforming the finance system by redirecting finance away from harmful activities and toward business models and activities that contribute to the global goals on nature, climate and sustainable development is essential for ensuring a habitable and thriving planet. It has articulated two mutually reinforcing ways- Financing Green and Greening Finance- to get finance flowing in the right direction, away from harming the planet and toward healing it.

Financing green involves mobilizing finance for conservation and climate impact at scale, which will require new green finance solutions involving the public and private sector – from conservation-focused funds, bonds, loans and insurance products to long-term investment in nature-positive businesses and enterprises.

Greening finance involves aligning financial systems to deliver nature, climate and sustainable development goals, including by accounting for the value of nature and systematically addressing nature- and climate-related risks.

With every issue of the WWF Living Planet Report, we see a further decline in the state of nature and a destabilization of the climate. It is no exaggeration to say that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth. We have five years to place the world on a sustainable trajectory before the negative feedbacks of combined nature degradation and climate change place us on the downhill slope of runaway tipping points.

The risk of failure is real – and the consequences almost unthinkable. As a global community, we have agreed on a way forward. The global goals show where we want to be and the path we need to take. All of us – governments, companies, organizations, individuals – need to walk the walk, and be ready to hold to account those who fail to do so. Together, we must be successful. We have just one living planet, and one opportunity to get it right.

Rituraj Phukan: Founder, Indigenous People’s Climate Justice Forum; Co-Founder, Smily Academy ;National Coordinator for Biodiversity, The Climate Reality Project India; Member, IUCN Wilderness Specialist Group; Commission Member – IUCN WCPA Climate Change, IUCN WCPA Connectivity Conservation, IUCN WCPA Indigenous People and Protected Areas Specialist Groups, IUCN WCPA South Asia Region and IUCN WCPA-SSC Invasive Alien Species Task Force; Member, International Antarctic Expedition 2013; Climate Force Arctic 2019 ; Ambassador, Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary. Rituraj Phukan is the Climate Editor, Mahabahu.

11-10-2024

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