Humans Have Killed Off More Than Half the World’s Wildlife – Do We Need a ‘New Global Deal for Nature and People’?

• “Exploding human consumption” has caused a massive drop in global wildlife populations on a scale unseen beyond mass extinction, according to a World Wildlife Fund report.
• This puts humans on a potentially irreversible path toward a hot, chaotic planet stripped bare of the natural resources that enrich it, the report concludes.

Why it matters

According to the report, which includes contributions from more than 50 experts from around the world:

“There cannot be a healthy, happy and prosperous future for people on a planet with a destabilized climate, depleted oceans and rivers, degraded land and empty forests, all stripped of biodiversity, the web of life that sustains us all.”

Overexploitation of the environment through activities such as mining, deforestation, and unsustainable agriculture, as well as climate change, are driving these developments. Impacts include:

• Populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have declined by 60 percent since 1970.
• Since 1950, almost 6 billion tons of fish and invertebrates have been removed from the oceans.
• Around 90 percent of the world’s seabirds are estimated to have plastic in their stomachs today.
• Marine freshwater species have declined by 83 percent since 1970.
• The rate of animal population drop-off is 100 to 1,000 times the rate of decline before human activity was a factor.

How the U.S. factors in

The U.S. is one of the top culprits, consuming more natural resources per unit of land than almost any other country.

Source: WWF Living Planet Report 2018

According to our partners at USAFacts, a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative aimed at making government data accessible and understandable, the U.S. emitted more than 6.51 billion tons of greenhouse gas in 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available), up from 6.36 billion tons in 1990.

U.S. consumption of nondurable goods has grown dramatically since 1947, with a particularly prominent spike in plastics and rubber products. The figure below from USAFacts shows U.S. gross domestic product from nondurable goods, with numbers adjusted for inflation.

Source: USAFacts

The U.S. is also adding fewer species to the endangered and threatened species list than it did in 1990, with no new species added in 2016, according to USAFacts:

Source: USAFacts

The Trump administration is currently seeking to roll back the Endangered Species Act.

Proposed action

The WWF calls for “a new global deal for nature and people” similar to the 2015 Paris agreement to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

“In the next years, we need to urgently transition to a net carbon-neutral society and halt and reverse nature loss — through green finance and shifting to clean energy and environmentally friendly food production. In addition, we must preserve and restore enough land and ocean in a natural state to sustain all life.”

What do you think?

Do you support the WWF's proposal? Do you prefer a different approach? Tell your reps what you think, then share your thoughts below.

—Sara E. Murphy

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / Freder)