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world wildlife fund
'The Fabric of Nature Is Unraveling,' Warns New Report on Wildlife Population Decline
"This is not just about wildlife," an expert said. "It's about the essential ecosystems that sustain human life."
Oct 10, 2024
Monitored populations of the world's vertebrate animals declined on average by 73% between 1970 and 2020, according to a major report released Wednesday by the World Wild Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London.
The 94-page report, 2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril, details the extent of loss for over 5,000 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The findings are based on studies of about 35,000 local populations of the studied species.
It's the latest version of a comprehensive report that has in the past been heavily cited by media, nonprofit, and government figures around the world. The previous version, published in 2022, found a 69% decline using data through 2018.
WWF released the new report, which is based on data in the Living Planet Index (LPI) maintained by ZSL, in advance of the COP16 global biodiversity summit that starts in Cali, Colombia on October 21.
"It really does indicate to us that the fabric of nature is unraveling,” Rebecca Shaw, WWF's chief scientist, toldThe Washington Post.
Monitored wildlife populations have decreased on average by 73% between 1970 and 2020, finds the latest Living Planet Index by our Institute of Zoology – the most comprehensive measure of vertebrate population trends across the globe. https://t.co/zJ7LBZC4mu pic.twitter.com/ZjVrHMotym
— ZSL (@OfficialZSL) October 10, 2024
The LPI, though seen by many as a key metric for following biodiversity loss, has been misinterpreted in the past and is not without its critics.
The findings don't mean that the total number of vertebrates or vertebrate species declined by 73%—rather, the figure shows an average change in population size. That is, in the index, a change in the population size of a very small population of, say, Guam kingfishers would have the same weight as a change in the population size of a far more populous animal.
A study published in June in Nature Communications questioned the mathematical techniques used by the LPI's authors and found that they had likely overstated vertebrate population decline. The LPI authors are preparing a rebuttal.
Some scientists, including Louise McRae, a ZSL researcher who works on the index, have suggested that it may in fact underestimate biodiversity loss because amphibian and reptile populations, which are struggling the most, are not fully represented in the database, as they're hard to monitor.
In any case, even the index's critics agree with the underlying argument that there is a crisis of biodiversity loss underway.
"This is unequivocal," Vox's Benji Jones wrote in an article that scrutinized the LPI. He continued:
Coral reefs are overheating and dying en masse. North America has lost some 3 billion birds. Insects are indeed vanishing. The rate of extinction is accelerating. In Hawaii, which has been called the extinction capital of the world, entire species of birds—and all the cultural heritage they carry—are blinking out as I write this.
WWF scientists emphasized that the biodiversity crisis is a crisis for humankind.
"This is not just about wildlife," Daudi Sumba, the group's chief conservation officer, said in a press call. "It's about the essential ecosystems that sustain human life."
Mike Barrett, a scientific adviser at WWF, agreed.
"Please don't just feel sad about the loss of nature," Barrett told the BBC. "Be aware that this is now a fundamental threat to humanity and we've really got to do something now."
Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said this urgency was why the new report was useful.
"It shows us that we're still not doing enough," he told Vox. "The most important thing to understand is that unless we can save biodiversity there's no way we can save humanity."
Humans are indeed the cause of the biodiversity crisis. Habitat loss and degradation, "driven primarily by our food system," is the most reported threat to wildlife populations, WWF says. Other threats include overexploitation, invasive species, and climate change.
The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali is the first of its kind since December 2022, when the world's nations made a potentially historic agreement to protect 30% of the world's lands and waters by 2030—30x30, as it's called.
"The stakes couldn't be higher," The Nature Conservancy has written of the Cali summit. "The goal is to transform the commitments of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework into actionable plans."
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'This Is a Disaster': Bonn Climate Conference Ends Without Financing Progress
"Developed countries are not even offering crumbs from the table and are blocking all progress," lamented one campaigner.
Jun 13, 2024
As the clock ticks down toward this November's COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany ended in a stalemate Thursday as nations were unable to agree on the size and scope of loss and damage financing and other issues.
This week's talks in Bonn yielded no significant progress on climate financing as the industrialized nations that are most responsible for the planetary emergency continued to try and shirk what Global South countries say is their responsibility to compensate those who suffer most but have emitted the least greenhouse gases.
"Developing countries need trillions in new public finance for adaptation, loss and damage, and for a just transition away from fossil fuels. But developed countries are not even offering crumbs from the table and are blocking all progress," said Friends of the Earth climate justice and energy campaigner Sara Shaw.
Loss and damage refers to funding meant to compensate developing nations for the destruction caused by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis the world's poor played little role in creating.
"They want developing countries to accept loans which will further fuel debt, and are pushing already discredited carbon market finance schemes, which causes grave harm in the Global South," Shaw added. "This is a disaster."
Crux of #SB60 #climate finance discussions in Bonn highlighted in my take at the recent @CANIntl press conference.
Thank you @LossandDamage for capturing it.@fossiltreaty #ClimateJustice #ClimateEmergency pic.twitter.com/ynVV2R4g5N
— Harjeet Singh (@harjeet11) June 11, 2024
Referring to the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said Thursday that the Bonn stalemate is "undermining the momentum needed to ensure strong outcomes at COP29, to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November."
"Discussions on climate finance lacked the urgency required for one of the most critical decisions to be finalized at COP29," WWF said of the Bonn conference. "A new funding goal for the period 2025 to 2035 is set to be agreed, in line with the terms of the Paris agreement."
"But developed countries have not yet given clear indication what they are considering contributing to developing countries for climate action, nor where the money will come from," the group added. "Concurrently, calls for urgently needed funding for adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage remain unfulfilled."
Greenpeace International climate politics expert Tracy Carty said in a statement Thursday that "rich developed countries talked at length about what they can't commit to and who else should pay, but failed to assure developing nations on their intent to significantly scale up financial support."
"Damning silence on what finance might be offered is stymying efforts to raise ambition and is a dereliction of duty to people battling climate-fueled storms, fires, and droughts," Carty added.
"Rich countries most responsible for this crisis must pay up for a fair fossil fuel phaseout and climate damages, without worsening unjust debts."
Developing nations have said they need around $400 billion annually for a loss and damage fund that they could tap to rebuild communities, restore crucial wildlife habitats, or relocate people displaced by the climate emergency. The United States has committed to a paltry $17.5 million for the global loss and damage fund. Developed nations have pledged approximately $661 million for loss and damage funding to date, according to the U.N. Development Program.
Laurie van der Burg, international public finance lead at Oil Change International, asserted that "the rich countries most responsible for this crisis must pay up for a fair fossil fuel phaseout and climate damages, without worsening unjust debts."
"We know they have more than enough money," van der Burg added. "It's just going to the wrong things."
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COP28 Stocktake Draft Reveals Vital Battle Over 'Unabated' Fossil Fuels
The draft offers "the fossil fuel industry a lifeline with dangerous distractions, like carbon capture and storage, and other abatement technologies," said one campaigner.
Dec 05, 2023
With a week left until the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference wraps up with a long-awaited "Global Stocktake" that will measure countries' progress towards the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, a draft of the document released Tuesday revealed a strong push to include a major loophole for the biggest fossil fuel producers—in the form of language that would allow so-called "abated" emissions.
More than 100 countries reportedly support a clause in the Global Stocktake that would call for "accelerating efforts toward phasing out unabated fossil fuels"—emissions that are not "captured" through technological fixes like carbon capture and storage (CCS) before they reach the atmosphere. That option in the text also calls on countries to "rapidly" reduce unabated fossil fuels "so as to achieve net zero CO2 in energy systems by or around mid-century."
The Biden administration, among other wealthy governments, has backed an expansion of CCS, offering $1.2 billion in grants for two projects this year. Analysts warn the technology would actually increase energy consumption by 20%, ultimately increasing the carbon emissions that CCS proponents claim are "abated" by the technology, as well as worsening environmental injustice by ramping up smog, benzene, and formaldehyde emissions in fenceline communities.
Other options in the draft text include a call for "an orderly and just phaseout of fossil fuels," which more than 25 countries support, according to BusinessGreen, and no mention at all of a phaseout.
Another paragraph in the draft included an agreement that countries will rapidly phase out "unabated coal power this decade" and ban the building of new coal power plants, and a second option would omit any mention of phasing out coal.
Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager for Oil Change International, acknowledged that just "three years ago, it would have been unimaginable to see governments consider an inclusion of fossil fuel phaseout in any [Conference of the Parties] agreement," which organizers and governments in the Global South have aggressively campaigned for in recent years.
The ultimate goal for the Global Stocktake, however, said Ioualalen, is "an agreement to immediately decline fossil fuel production and use... as well as a full, fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout."
The draft released on Wednesday goes in the opposite direction, he said, giving "the fossil fuel industry a lifeline with dangerous distractions, like carbon capture and storage, and other abatement technologies."
"We urge parties to hold a strong line against these failed technologies and refuse any language that allows fossil fuel companies to justify continued oil and gas extraction," said Ioualalen.
Pivoting to technologies like carbon capture and storage instead of focusing on sharply dialing down all carbon emissions, he added, would "blow us well past 1.5°C [in planetary heating], and lead to catastrophic climate consequences."
As author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in a column earlier this week, countries that are embracing technologies like CCS are playing into the hands of fossil fuel giants.
"It's abundantly clear that coal, oil, and gas are breaking the climate system; it's also abundantly clear that the people who own coal, oil, and gas reserves don't care," wrote McKibben. "In an effort to keep burning them, so they can continue to collect the returns, they propose building vast engineering projects alongside fossil-fuel generating plants, to capture the carbon dioxide from the exhaust stream. That is, they want to 'abate' the damage of their product."
Scientists have warned that eight years after the Paris climate agreement was finalized with a goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C—or as far below 2°C as possible—the world is currently on track to warm by 3°C this century.
Global carbon emissions have continued to rise in recent years as countries including the U.S. and the U.K. have approved major fossil fuel projects despite warnings from energy and climate experts that oil, gas, and coal extraction have no place on a pathway to 1.5°C.
The final Global Stocktake, said Shirley Matheson, the World Wildlife Fund's global nationally-determined contribution enhancement coordinator, must force governments to "face up to the consequences of their collective inaction, and commit to strengthen climate ambition and action in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C."
Matheson called the current draft "bloated" and expressed hope that countries in attendance at the conference (COP28) will adopt a Global Stocktake with the best options included in the draft.
"Good language on phasing out fossil fuels is included as an option, and new text options have been added that call for stronger ambition in the national climate plans, and a new collective goal for 60% emissions cuts by 2035," she said. "These signals are essential to create the conditions for more ambitious commitments and more international cooperation to achieve them."
"Time is running out for negotiators to agree on a draft text with clear political options for ministers later in the week," she added. "Countries must work together to achieve science-aligned guidance and ways forward for a dramatic course correction of climate action. This will give us the best chance of securing a livable planet."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, a record number of fossil fuel industry lobbyists are also attending COP28, leaving campaigners concerned that the final agreements out of the summit will include significant loopholes for the industry.
“Global leaders have to deliver a full package," said Ioualalen. "We will not accept weak outcomes only on coal or renewables, and without addressing the primary driver of the climate crisis, fossil fuels."
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