To mark the International Year of Biodiversity, this week sees the United Nations release Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, the most comprehensive report yet compiled on the state of life on our planet. This report is quite unique because it's not only based on literature, scientific literature, but it's also based on the 110 national reports that we have received so far by government, just indicating the status of biodiversity at local, national and global level. However, the report makes for grim reading. It reveals how the Earth's ecosystems and species are buckling under the strain of unsustainable development. Based on data supplied both by the scientific community as well as directly from national governments, the report reveals that the target agreed by world governments at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss has not been met.
Indeed, not a single government submitting national reports claims that their 2010 biodiversity target has been completely met at the national level. In synthesising this evidence, the report states that the consequences of current trends are much worse than previously thought, highlighting the impact on the poor in particular, who stand to suffer disproportionately from potentially catastrophic changes to ecosystems in coming decades. Although ultimately, all societies stand to lose.
Our lives depend on biological diversity. Species and ecosystems are disappearing at an unsustainable rate. We humans are the cause. Without biodiversity there would be no life on planet Earth and biodiversity is dependent on species. Without species we cannot have the ecosystems that we have become accustomed to and also the services and the goods that we derive from ecosystems.
Most endangered of all ocean ecosystems are the warm water reef building corals. Faced by the double whammy of rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification, they are undergoing the most rapid deterioration. The proportion of reefs with at least 50% living coral cover declined from nearly 66% in the early 1980s to just 4% in 2004, indicating a long-term shift to a less productive system.
Overexploitation and destructive fishing practices are at the heart of the threats being imposed on the world's ocean food webs. About 80% of the world's fish docks for which assessment information is available are fully exploited or overexploited. Overexploitation brings ever closer the threat of suddenly reaching a tipping point, a place of no return, where habitat degradation and species loss is irreparable. Land-based species and ecosystems fare little better in the report.
It finds one quarter of the world's land is becoming degraded. The report shows that although deforestation has recently slowed in some countries, most notably in the Amazon, forests continue to be lost at a rapid rate, approximately 130,000 square kilometres per year. Forests are estimated to contain...
More than half the world's terrestrial animal and plant species says the report. But there has been some progress too. Well, you know, the little known secret is that... The Amazon has gone from almost no protection to 57% protected.
And while that's not enough, it shows you can actually make a big difference. And the real issue now is to bring it all to scale and to really work it into the economics of the world. Of 292 large river systems, two-thirds have become moderately or highly fragmented by dams and reservoirs. Water quality shows variable trends, with improvements in some regions being offset by serious pollution in many densely populated areas.
One group of species, tropical freshwater fish, have declined by 74%. We are part of nature, and nature cannot exist without human beings, and we human beings cannot exist without nature. The population of wild vertebrate species fell by an average of 31% globally between 1970 and 2006, with a decline especially severe in... in the tropics and in freshwater ecosystems. And of domesticated animals, at least one-fifth of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction.
The true figure may be much higher. We do not know when we will come to the point where a species loss is irreparable. We cannot actually retrieve that species anymore.
We cannot wait for a catastrophe to galvanise public opinion and public understanding because we don't know enough even about biodiversity. We are learning as we go along. And we may well be causing things to go into extinction that could be very vital to our future. Although important progress is being made, made to conserve plant genetic diversity, especially through using seed banks. Overall, genetic diversity is being lost in both natural ecosystems and in systems of crop and livestock production.
Losing biodiversity is undermining critical ecosystem services, the provisioning of food, clean water, the regulating surface, the way we regulate our climate, pollination services, there's cultural importance of biodiversity. economic value. The release of the global Biodiversity Outlook 3 report during the International Year of Biodiversity is a wake-up call to the world that we're destroying the natural capital upon which our livelihoods depend.
My problem with capitalism as we implement it today is that we make it one-dimensional, and that's not going to work. The world is a three-dimensional space, right? You are dependent on society and community for well-being, you are dependent on nature for well-being, and you like your house and your railroad and your car.
But you can't just only live with a house, railroad and car, but with no clean air, no fresh water, no friends, no family. And yet our entire economic thinking is geared towards just... maintaining production of goods and services and maintaining one dimension of capitalism. Can't be right. The threat to our planet's biodiversity lies in five key driving forces, claims the report.
Terrestrial habitats are not only being lost, they've also become highly fragmented, threatening species and affecting the ability of ecosystems to deliver important services to human communities. Excessive nitrogen and other forms of pollution are poisoning the environment. Invasive species are wiping out native plants and animals. Overexploitation on both land and sea are leading to species loss.
The report also identifies that climate change is already impacting on biodiversity and is projected to become a progressively more significant threat to biodiversity in the coming decades. However, the report emphasises that although the outlook is bleak, It's not too late to do something about it. Mathematical models and our observations and our experiments show that we're not necessarily doomed.
But it does show that if we don't do something now, we will be in big trouble. The report demonstrates that actions taken now can make a difference for the future, both for species and for ecosystems. Indeed, maintaining biological diversity can help reduce the impact of threats from pests and even changing climates. The insurance factor that diversity brings, this is what farmers have been using traditionally, growing different crops.
and different varieties of the crop, so that if you have a very hot day or a flood on a particular moment in the year, you don't lose everything. You don't put all your eggs in the same basket. So diversity is becoming even more important now than it has ever been in the past.
The report concludes that... Actions taken over the next two decades will determine whether the relatively stable and benign environmental conditions on which human civilization has depended for the past 10,000 years will continue beyond this century. If we fail to use this opportunity, many ecosystems on the planet and our place within them will move into unknown territory.
Only by establishing and committing to new global targets for biodiversity that are smart, Strategic, measurable, ambitious, realistic and time-bound. Will we the world have a roadmap for the next crucial decades? This unique document will be submitted to the New York Biodiversity Summit as well as to the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit so as to allow the leaders of the world to contribute in shaping the 2050 vision on biodiversity and the 2020 mission on biodiversity with the full and active engagement of all stakeholders for the benefit of the children of the world.