A UN Global Land Outlook assessment has revealed that more than 1 million species are now threatened with extinction, vanishing at a rate not seen in 10 million years, saying that 50% of Earth’s land surfaces are considered degraded.
The report published on Hellenics last Friday, supported UN Secretary-General António Guterres message at 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada.
Guterres had said that “humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction.”
Guterres piled further pressure on attendees by describing the conference as “our chance to stop this orgy of destruction”.
The destruction to which Gueterres refers spans the globe and is happening on a massive scale.
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In an ongoing effort to slow the destruction of nature, delegates at the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada, focused on reversing the rapid decline of animals, plants and insects. The conference, also known as COP15, worked towards a new global agreement to protect biodiversity.
Also, research by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found that human activity for food production, infrastructure, energy and mining accounts for 79% of the impact on threatened species.
Only by fundamentally transforming these systems can we shift from destructive human activity to a nature-positive economy, the report said.
The World Economic Forum’s New Nature Economy Report II sets out a range of transitions that will reverse nature loss and pull us back from the brink. Without these changes, the world will suffer irreversible destruction of biodiversity that will have far-reaching impacts on the economy and all life on Earth.
The report delivers a stark warning about the risks we are creating by destroying nature, stating that “$44 trillion of economic value generation – over half the world’s total GDP – is potentially at risk as a result of the dependence of business on nature and its services”.
Biodiversity loss was ranked as the third most severe threat humanity will face in the next 10 years in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022.
