The UN has released a report which says human activity is destroying the planet and is on course to obliterating wildlife, which could ultimately lead to the downfall of humanity. Several factors are involved, according to the report, such as a loss of forests, pollution, clean drinking water and destroying the habitats of small insects which are vital to the ecosystem. The report describes the era as the “age of environmental breakdown” and calls for immediate action.
AFP said the report, which will not be published until May 6, “painstakingly catalogues how humanity has undermined the natural resources upon which its very survival depends”.
The document states human activity has altered 40 percent of the marine environment, 50 percent of inland waterways, and three quarters of the land on Earth.
It warns “subsidies to fisheries, industrial agriculture, livestock raising, forestry, mining and the production of biofuel, or fossil fuel energy encourage waste, inefficiency, and over-consumption”.
It said: “Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with extinction, many within decades.”
The pace of extinction is rapidly accelerating and the report warns it “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years.”
UN body Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) chair Robert Watson said in a statement: “We need to recognise that climate change and loss of nature are equally important, not just for the environment, but as development and economic issues as well.
“The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get from nature.
“Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come.
“Policies, efforts, and actions—at every level—will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides.”