A Million Species Lost From Earth Due to Human Interference: UN

Delegates from 130 nations will be meeting in Paris on 29 April to discuss the executive summary line-by-line.

Penguins playing a special game of one-upmanship.

(Photo: AP/Caters TV)

Antarctica’s second largest emperor penguin colonies have totally disappeared after three unprecedented years in which they weren’t able to breed.

Halley Bay has been home to the second largest emperor penguin colonies, second only to Coulman Island in the Ross Sea. Over the last 60 years, scientists have been observing that this colony, numbered between 14,300 and 23,000 pairs, have moved to nearby sea ice to breed.

However, due to tremendous breeding failures post 2016, the penguins were forced to abandon their reliable haven, according to a recent study published in Antarctic Science.

Sadly, this isn’t the only story.

Stories of Species Struggling to Survive

Australia, on 19 February 2019, officially declared the famous Great Barrier Reef rodent extinct. It is the first mammal that’s believed to have been erased by the after-effects of human-generated climate change. The rat-lookalike Bramble Cay melomys had their only known habitat inside the small island in far north of Australia.

Up to one million species vanished from the earth due to human induced reasons, according to a draft UN report obtained by AFP, which describes how humanity has destroyed the nature that its existence depends on.

There is an increasing loss of clean air, pure drinkable water, CO2 and CO absorbing forests, chirping birds, pollinating insects, nutritious fish and rain-inducing green plants.

Well, biodiversity loss and global warming are closely linked, according to the 44-page Summary for Policy Makers, which includes an 1,800-page UN assessment of scientific literature on the state of nature. Delegates from across 130 nations will be meeting in Paris on 29 April and will discuss the executive summary line-by-line.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report also warns about "an imminent rapid acceleration in the global rate of species extinction."

The pace of loss “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years,” it notes. “Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with extinction, many within decades.”

Other findings in the same draft report of UN, collected by AFP includes:

Three-quarters of the total land surface, 40 percent of the marine environment, and 50 percent of inland waterways across the globe have been “severely altered.”

Areas where nature’s contribution to human well-being will be highly compromised are majorly home to indigenous peoples. Also, according to the report released by AFP, the world’s poorest communities will be most vulnerable to climate change.

More than 2 billion people worldwide solely depend on wood fuel for energy, 4 billion rely on natural medicines, and more than 75 percent of global food crops require animal pollination and rebirth of animals and plants.

How Human Interference Has Hurt Nature

According to a report published by the ICES Journal of marine Science, nearly half of land and marine ecosystems have been seriously compromised by human interference and negligence in the last 50 years.

The report also cautioned the human race against climate change solutions that may inadvertently harm nature. For example, the use of bio-fuels combined with “carbon capture and storage” — the sequestration of carbon dioxide released when bio-fuels are exhausted, is widely seen as a key factor in the transition to green energy on a global scale.

But the land required to grow all those bio-fuel crops may cause the decline in food production, the expansion of protected areas or reforestation efforts.

Human beings have existed on earth since the last 50,000 years or more. There is no denying that our species has wreaked huge ecological destruction by hunting the starved, disturbing the fauna of this planet, and thereby, depleting entire populations of various species of animals and plants. Can we still turn it around?