Humans have provoked the worst spate of extinctions since the
dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, according to a UN
report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address
the slide.
The report paints a grim picture of life on earth, with
declining numbers of plants, animals, insects and birds across the
globe, and warns that the current extinction rate is up to 1,000
times faster than in the past. Some 844 animals and plants are
known to have disappeared in the last 500 years.
Released on Monday to mark the start of a UN environment program
meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, the report says: "In effect, we are
currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the
history of earth."
A rising human population of 6.5 billion is wrecking the
environment for thousands of other species, it adds, and
undermining efforts agreed at a 2002 UN summit in Johannesburg to
slow the rate of decline by 2010. The global demand for biological
resources now exceeds the planet's capacity to renew them by 20 per
cent.
The report, Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 from the
secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says:
"The direct causes of biodiversity loss habitat change,
over-exploitation, the introduction of invasive alien species,
nutrient loading and climate change show no sign of abating."
It is bleaker than a first UN review of the diversity of life,
issued in 2001, and says the 2010 goal can only be attained with
"unprecedented additional efforts."
About 6 million hectares of primary forest are felled each year
and about a third of mangrove swamps have been lost since the
1980s.
Up to 52 percent of higher bird species studied are threatened
with extinction and the number of large fish in the North Atlantic
has declined by two-thirds in the last 50 years.
The report concludes: "Biodiversity is in decline at all levels
and geographical scales."
On the positive side, the number and size of protected areas is
increasing, though most types of natural environment fall short of
the target to protect 10 percent.
(China Daily March 22, 2006)
