Living Planet Index: The Time To Panic Is Now
Recently, the term ‘global double emergency' was making rounds in the news. This is in context to the loss of biodiversity and climate change, which is in line with what the Living Planet Index is telling us. This index is released by World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF), in collaboration with ZSL. The report points towards a ‘devastating' loss of biodiversity. In fact, preserving biodiversity is essential to counteract the impact of climate change.
What is the report?
The report uses Living Planet Index to calculate the ever-decline in vertebrate species, which is released once every two years. It is a measure of the world's biological diversity on population trends of vertebrate species in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats. It is released by the Institute of Zoology (Zoology Society of London) and was founded in 1826.
What are the report findings?
In a nutshell, the population of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish has fallen by 69 per cent since the 1970s. The steepest loss has occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean region, where the population declined by 94 per cent between 1970 and 2018. Biodiversity preservation should go up, but the report highlights we are going in the negative direction.
The 2022 edition features a 32,000 population of 5,230 species across the world. Freshwater species globally are reduced by 83 per cent, mangroves continue to be lost at a rate of 0.13 per cent per year. The LPI of freshwater fish which are migratory in nature shows a decline of 76 percent. They are degraded by overexploitation and pollution, alongside natural stressors such as storms and coastal erosion. Around 137 square kilometers of the Sundarbans mangrove forest in India and Bangladesh has been eroded since 1985, reducing land and ecosystem services for many of the 10 million people who live there.
Source: WWF
One of the key findings is land use change is still the most important driver of biodiversity loss. Unless we limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate change will become the dominant cause of biodiversity loss in the coming decades. In 2021, for the first time, the UN climate and biodiversity bodies- IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) and IPCC (intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change) came together to highlight the multiple connections between the climate and biodiversity crisis, including their common roots, and warn of the emerging risks of an unviable future.
The index also speaks about indicates which species are most vulnerable to decline, the ancient groups of plants are most threatened, while corals are declining fast.
Source: WWF
What are the recommendations?
Biodiversity loss and climate change gave to be dealt with as one issue rather than two different issues because they are closely intertwined. A nature-positive approach has to be adopted, which needs game-changing remedies in how we produce, consume, govern, and finance in the future. The idea is to ensure that the costs and benefits of everyone's actions are socially just and equitably shared.
