Hot off the press: The 2016 Living Planet Report

Today marked the release of the latest Living Planet report by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), a leading publication setting out the current state of biodiversity. To be honest, I was a little surprised this morning when I had to navigate to the ‘science’ section of the BBC website – I had expected it to be front page news but then again, it was the Bake-off final last night.

The headlines I did find paint a largely negative picture and sum up a the report’s findings with the major theme as loss – it’s a damning and shocking report spelling out in no uncertain terms that species are continuing to disappear at a rapid rate and its results only extend the trend from the 2014 edition that I mentioned in the first post on this blog of major species decline. The trend, however, has worsened – now stating a decrease in species abundance of 58% between 1970 and 2012, increased this time in great part due to a more informed consideration of freshwater species. The big statistic that most outlets have grabbed hold of is a predicted loss in species populations of 67% by 2020 (measured against the levels of 1970). Considering that one of the thresholds for a mass extinction is the loss of 75% of species (Barnosky et al, 2011) it appears that the 6^th mass extinction event could be with us faster than expected.  

The Guardian's headline today

Something that becomes clear from the start of reading is that this edition is structured around two of the big conservation buzz words of the moment – ‘Anthropocene’ and ‘Resilience’, with the Anthropocene as the ‘defining concept’ in this year’s report. For me, it seems that the Anthropocene has become one of the ‘defining concepts’ of my degree as well – over the course of the last two years or so I feel like I’ve witnessed a change from being introduced to it as a proposed term starting to gain traction in the academic world, to being included as a key term in an international publication such as this one which cites the ideas of Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) and Steffen at al. (2007 and 2015) as key starting points for their report. The focus on the Anthropocene is the report taking the stance that the human race has triggered this biodiversity crisis. 

If ‘Anthropocene’ is the bad news, then ‘Resilience’ seems to be the good – it’s portrayed by the report as the way in which we can halt the negative trajectories and become more sustainable for the benefit of our societies, the environment and wildlife, the goal being a ‘transformation’ to a resilient planet. Contrary to laying out the loss of species to simply shock people, the report seems to be taking the approach of "well here's the science, now let's act on it". According to the WWF, being resilient involves three goals that will result from ‘better choices’ – biodiversity conservation, ecosystem integrity and food, water and energy security; the report combines these in a way which intrinsically links the future of the human species with that of the biosphere, echoing the planetary boundaries concept. The message from this is clear – becoming resilient to the socio-economic effects of food, water and energy insecurity requires a more environmentalist approach; to solve our problems we must also solve the ones that we have placed upon the environment. 

What I take from this report is yet another move towards the agreement that human activity is responsible for the biodiversity crisis, and a message that urgent action needs to be taken to enforce a shift to a more sustainable planet. Whether this will help towards halting biodiversity loss, however, is another thing. 

First post

Welcome to the blog!

Something that has interested me throughout my undergraduate studies is the concept of biodiversity – its global patterns and how we can track its changes, the way that species interact in a complex ecosystem, and what we can do to ultimately stop the unnecessary loss of biodiversity attributed to human action (I know, a bit idealistic perhaps).

We may be in what the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) is calling the ‘Decade on diversity’ but statistics seem to be pointing to anything but, with wildlife suffering more than ever from human activity. The CBD’s Aichi targets of 20 actions to be achieved by just over 3 years’ time set out desirable, but in my opinion unrealistic, goals to improve sustainability and prevent action that is leading to biodiversity loss. There is motivation to save biodiversity, but I’m sceptical as to whether this is something that can be achieved under current climate change predictions.

As reported in the 2014 Living Planet Report, populations of vertebrate species have decreased by a staggering 52% in the last 40 years with freshwater species declining at an even more drastic 76%. Trends show little sign of slowing, the last 10 years causing us to say goodbye to 2 million km2 of forest land (Hansen et al, 2013). So there can be little doubt that a drastic change is taking place.

credit

Mass extinctions (a loss of more than ¾ of species in a short (at least geologically speaking) time period) are nothing new in the Earth’s history – we’ve had 5 with the most recent finishing approximately 65,000,000 years ago. But studies such as Barnosky et al 2011 suggest that we are experiencing a 6^th, with species losses at a higher rate than they should be according to fossil data. As Barnosky et al. discuss, extinction is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, except for when it happens as rapidly and at such a high level as it is today. We are drastically changing the environment at a rate that precludes the potential for species to recover, evolve and keep up with the changes in climate.

Hopefully, this blog will manage to explore these concepts in more depth and look at what the future prospects are for global biodiversity and answer some questions that have been playing on my mind for a while – how likely is it that we can slow down the rate of biodiversity loss and extinction, and what exactly will the consequences be if we don’t?