In the most comprehensive report of its kind to date, the United Nations has detailed the unprecedented current rate of decline in biodiversity –  tens to hundreds of times higher than in the past 10 million years. Compiled over the last three years by more than 450 scientists and diplomats, and drawing on over 15,000 studies, the report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) was published on May 6^th. Its conclusions are grim. One million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction. This includes 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals, and almost one-third of other marine species.  More than 500,000 land species, the report said, have insufficient natural habitats left to ensure their long-term survival. Human actions rooted in urbanisation, over-population, and unsustainable consumption are driving the extinction, it concluded. Excess waste, farming, logging, poaching, fishing, mining, and the burning of fossil-fuels and resultant global warming are all contributing.

“It’s time political and corporate leaders stopped making empty promises and started acting to prevent us sliding towards another mass extinction of life on Earth,” said Hohn Sauven, Greenpeace UK’s executive director. “Business as usual – destroying the rainforests, emptying the seas of marine life, and polluting our air and water – is getting us there at breakneck speed.”

For too long the protection of the natural world has been neglected, sidelined to other interests, with efforts to prevent biodiversity loss severely inadequate. This report needs to be taken as a major wake up call.  The destruction of natural world is a travesty that in its own right deserves action – and with our own quality of life directly intertwined with the fate of other species society as a whole, it should be especially alarmed.  The ecosystems in which people all over the world are intrinsically bound up,  and on which they depend for their survival, are being directly threatened. In order to ensure safe and liveable environments, food security and access to clean water, in both wealthy and poor countries, a rich biodiversity must be maintained.

The report comes 27 years after the Convention on Biodiversity, the first global treaty to protect all of the world’s species. Whereas the global effort has so far evidently been inadequate to do so, recently environmental issues have been building on the global political agenda. Last year, the extent of the climate crisis was brought into the global spotlight by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1.5 report.  Global school strikes against climate change, Extinction Rebellion protests, both the U.K. and Ireland parliaments’ declarations of climate emergencies, and Green New Deal debates in the U.S. and Spain have followed. The timing of the report suggests the authors hope the crisis of biodiversity will receive the same response.

The report calls for radical action that goes beyond current conservation strategies such as the creation of protected areas. Transformative change, it insists, is needed across society, politics, economics and technology. This includes reversed trade rules, ending of subsidies incentivising environmental degradation, massive investments in forests and other green infrastructure, new environmental laws and stronger enforcement, and changes in individual behaviour towards lower consumption and more efficient use of natural resources.  This would require a fundamental shift in societal values and goals away from high consumption and economic growth at all costs. As part of this, IPBES has recommended humanity ought to shift beyond using traditional economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) towards more long-term and holistic considerations concerning economic success and quality of life.  “The situation is tricky and difficult but I would never give up. The report shows there is a way out,” said Josef Settele, an IPBES co-chair. “People shouldn’t panic, but they should begin drastic change. Business as usual with small adjustments won’t be enough.”