from the World Wildlife Fund | World Wildlife Fund issues 10th edition of ‘The Living Planet Report,’ a science-based assessment of the planet’s health
Washington, DC – Monday, September 29: Between 1970 and 2010 populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish around the globe dropped 52 percent, says the 2014 Living Planet Report released today by World Wildlife Fund (WWF). This biodiversity loss occurs disproportionately in low-income countries—and correlates with the increasing resource use of high-income countries.
In addition to the precipitous decline in wildlife populations the report’s data point to other warning signs about the overall health of the planet. The amount of carbon in our atmosphere has risen to levels not seen in more than a million years, triggering climate change that is already destabilizing ecosystems. High concentrations of reactive nitrogen are degrading lands, rivers and oceans. Stress on already scarce water supplies is increasing. And more than 60 percent of the essential “services” provided by nature, from our forests to our seas, are in decline.
“We’re gradually destroying our planet’s ability to support our way of life,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF. “But we already have the knowledge and tools to avoid the worst predictions. We all live on a finite planet and its time we started acting within those limits.”
The Living Planet Report, WWF’s biennial flagship publication, measures trends in three major areas:
- populations of more than ten thousand vertebrate species;
- human ecological footprint, a measure of consumption of goods, greenhouse gas emissions; and
- existing biocapacity, the amount of natural resources for producing food, freshwater, and sequestering carbon.
“There is a lot of data in this report and it can seem very overwhelming and complex,” said Jon Hoekstra, chief scientist at WWF. “What’s not complicated are the clear trends we’re seeing — 39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone – all in the past 40 years.”
The report says that the majority of high-income countries are increasingly consuming more per person than the planet can accommodate; maintaining per capita ecological footprints greater than the amount of biocapacity available per person. People in middle- and low-income countries have seen little increase in their per capita footprints over the same time period.
While high-income countries show a 10 percent increase in biodiversity, the rest of the world is seeing dramatic declines. Middle-income countries show 18 percent declines, and low-income countries show 58 percent declines. Latin America shows the biggest decline in biodiversity, with species populations falling by 83 percent.
“High-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, but low income countries are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses,” said Keya Chatterjee, WWF’s senior director of footprint. “In effect, wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion.”
The report underscores that the declining trends are not inevitable. To achieve globally sustainable development, each country’s per capita ecological footprint must be less than the per capita biocapacity available on the planet, while maintaining a decent standard of living.
At the conclusion of the report, WWF recommends the following actions:
- Accelerate shift to smarter food and energy production
- Reduce ecological footprint through responsible consumption at the personal, corporate and government levels
- Value natural capital as a cornerstone of policy and development decisions
For birds, fishes , reptiles and amphibians, and mammals, half or slightly more are increasing, a bit less than half are decreasing, and a thin sliver are unchanging.Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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I suspect a lot of cherry picking is gong on. However, some of it is likely to be true. Consider the US over the past couple of centuries. We used to have a large wolf, bear and bison population just to name a few. Their numbers have been greatly diminished because they were dangerous to humans. However, the populations of other species that were limited by the existence of predators has flourished (deer to name one just one). So, as always, if you pick and choose carefully you can probably tell just about any story you want.
I would expect the same thing is going on in 3rd world countries. The dangerous species or those that damage human property are being eliminated but the species that were prey for those species are likely doing quite well.
The WWF is notorious for telling the biggest lies.
I remember 10 years ago they ran a TV ad claiming that 1 species goes extinct every 5 seconds or so due to evil humans. It didn’t take a mathematician to quickly figure out that within several years at that rate, the planet would be barren of life.
Yet the ad remained on tv for over a year.
As Willis always reminds us, “Where are all these dead critters’ bodies?”…
There were around 50 animal extinctions last century, none of which were caused by Global Warming, but rather by: habitat destruction, introduction of non-indigenous species and over hunting/catching/harvesting.
Granted, some of these extinctions were senseless and could and should have avoided, but there are about 10 million species of animals on Earth… WWF’s assertion that animal populations have dropped 40~80% since 1970 is barking mad….
If the enviro-wackos really wish to improve the environment, they’d realize that poverty is perhaps one of the worst causes of environmental destruction. The quickest way to alleviate poverty is by poor countries adopting free-market economies, which requires the economy to have access to cheap fossil fuels, to which they are also opposed…
The WWF is all about centrally controlled economies, expensive energy and lower standards of living…
Oh, goody… I can’t wait for their new dystopian nightmare.
The claim in the story is baseless because it literally has no base, that is, no defined starting point of number of animals, just some vague decline percentage.
And if “Data are only included if a measure of population size were available for at least two years,” how can that be included in a 40 year study? Is that population assumed to be 0 prior to the two years of measurment? Or just assumed to be whatever you want it to be prior to the 2 years.
Do the WWF realise that given the rate of decline they identify in their report, the following extrapolation becomes possible:
Rate of change in report:
2008: -28%
2010: – 52%
Extrapolating to 2014: -100%!!!
(see p.146)
At least a third of the participants from WrestleMania VI are dead now. That’s sad to think about.
Raises the question of which WWF has more credibility.
I say it’s the WrestleMania one…
‘….said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF…. “We all live on a finite planet and its time we started acting within those limits.”’
Clearly this is false. We do not live on a “finite” planet, because our main energy source, the sun, is extraneous to our planet.
They obviously attended the Paul Erlich school of applied
bollocksstatistics.“Chicken Little had a bird brain” – Captain Obvious
I monitor overall wildlife trends as part of my work in the UK and Europe. Whilst there is some recovery – for example, wolf and lynx, some eagles and herons, and some range expansion, the overall pattern since 1970 is dismal – and 50% is not wide of the mark for virtually all farmland birds, many trans-Africa migrant birds some specialist woodland species; amphibians and reptiles are no longer a childhood experience in the countryside; and there are massive declines in insect numbers. Very few fisheries are sustainable, and sharks, turtles, some sea mammals – have shown drastic declines.
Note: the report is dealing with ABUNDANCE not diversity or extinction.
Why is it, I ask myself, because I know the ‘sceptical’ blogging community will not examine its own prejudices, that being sceptical on the science of climate change (and this site does a brilliant job on that science), also coincides with an entrenched naive optimism regarding anything to do with economic growth and resource use? It is sad, because that is one reason why the ‘greens’ can dismiss scepticism. And since most world leaders today have to be ‘green’, it has major consequences for getting the message through.
Please stick to climate science!
PS I am no great fan of WWF.
You’ve made a string of unsupported assertions. Back them up, with sources, please.
He doesn’t have to…it’s made from his authority stance “I monitor overall wildlife trends as part of my work in the UK and Europe.” Therefore my interpretation is correct
You had me listening right up until you claimed massive declines in insect numbers.
Ditto
Not sure I believe pre 70s numbers. Many birds etc supposed to be common pre greenieness, I have never seen. Also, how much of these patterns were due to farming etc methods at the time? And have now changed because land management has changed? It seems to me that many middle aged people take the state of the world when they were young and think it should always be like that. 40 years is a miniscule snspshot in the history of the fauna and flora of the planet. We have literally no idea what the “proper” numbers of anything should be. Or even if such a thing could or should exist.
What I find really strange is that those who are the most enthusiastic about evolution are the first to want to force things to stay the same they were in the summer of 1971…
And how do you “monitor” this? Do you go out and count actual creatures? Or do you sit behind a computer?
Bet he monitors the same sources that the WWF does. My experience with biologists is that when they don’t see it they don’t count it. They are wrong more often than they are right. It is the old problem of obtaining reliable data.
What’s offensive about the report is its claim that developed countries have outsourced wildlife destruction. Given that by their own numbers only 7% of the wildlife decline is due to climate change, how are we doing that? Rainforest destruction? But that’s mostly due to biofuel mandates. Other declines are mostly due to increased human populations and to the spread of Kalisnikovs in Africa, expanding the bush meat trade. That’s not our fault. As for fish, it’s the greenies who are opposed to fish farms, which take the pressure off wild fish.
“What’s not complicated are the clear trends we’re seeing — 39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone – all in the past 40 years.”
so 76% of freshwater wildlife is GONE?!!! He didn’t say in decline or disappearing he said gone. Sorry but we would have noticed if over 2/3 of our freshwater wildlife had vanished,at least in my province.
The WWF should have stuck to professional wrestling.
“The amount of carbon in our atmosphere has risen to levels not seen in more than a million years, triggering climate change that is already destabilizing ecosystems.”
Carbon dioxide, morons. But since the CO2 levels of 1,000,000 years ago were tiny compared to those over 150,000,000 years ago and those didn’t whack species, then a return to the slight levels of the status quo antes isn’t going to have any such effect as a necessary outcome. And what about CO2 levels at the end of the Permian period that were as low as anything recently? They were followed by a sudden increase to over 2600 ppm and none of that at the hand of man. It was was an acceptable natural level and we are responsible for the tiniest portion of an increase that is only a fraction of what has been the global average for billions of years, then how can it be considered to be unusual or bad at all?
It seems historically that high levels of atmospheric “carbon” did a lot of good, producing lots of food for animals all the way up the food chain.
It appears to me that rapid plant growth would be more beneficial than “destabilizing”.
Of all the species on this planet, the one species that should be the easiest to track a population census over time is the polar bear. Where can it hide? What obscures it?
Yet, just this year, the wildlife group that is the authority on the polar bear population trend admits that it was only guesswork to “satisfy a public demand” for a number and should be “viewed with great caution.”
1. Folks should read the report.
2. Willis’s argument is about extinction, this study is about decline. His argument ( while valid for extinctions) doesnt apply. There are no bodies. We eat them, for example. They never get born, for another example.
3. Anthony’s title is wrong. It’s not a baseless claim. We can argue with the evidence they present, but they
present an argument that has a basis.
There is a large pile of data here. Some of it will be wrong of course. But you test a claim by looking at the data.
“The LPI is calculated using trends in 10,380 populations of
over 3,038 vertebrate species (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds
and mammals). These species groups have been comprehensively
researched and monitored by scientists and the general public for
many years, meaning that a lot of data is available to assess the state
of specific populations and their trends over time.”
“9. Where do the data used in the LPI come from?
All data used in constructing the index are time series of either
population size, density, abundance or a proxy of abundance. The
species population data used to calculate the index are gathered
from a variety of sources. Time series information for vertebrate
species is collated from published scientific literature, online
databases and grey literature, totalling 2,337 individual data
sources. Data are only included if a measure of population size
were available for at least two years, and information available on
how the data were collected, what the units of measurement were,
and the geographic location of the population. The data must be
collected using the same method on the same population throughout
the time series and the data source referenced and traceable.
The period covered by the index is from 1970 to 2010. The
year 2010 is chosen as the cut-off point for the index because there
is not yet enough data to calculate a robust index up to the present
day. Datasets are continually being added to the database.”
I wonder how many species are growing in numbers.
It is on P18 of the report.
oppps, yep you are right, two different issues. Will have to do some reading later..
“We eat them, for example…”
But we didn’t global warm them to death which is perhaps the most important baseless claim.
Mosh, you could have thought about it some more.
You were right about the lack of consideration of extinctions in the report. They themselves admit that counting extinctions is difficult. However, you might have asked yourself how they could calculate a meaningful “Living Planet Index” which is baselined on the year 1970.
How many populations/ species were included in the original baseline? Their figure 68 on page 145 0f the document (not the pdf) shows that from March 2006 to May 2014 their database increased from less than 2000 populations (think “temperature stations”) of 1313 species to about 10000 populations consisting of 3038 species. How did they “baseline” all of these recent entrants? Did they use “anomalies”? I doubt it.
Their index seems to consist of proportional changes in population size weighted by population size. Er, that would mean they are averaging changes (from what baseline for the newcomers?) in the counts of each population. Even assuming these counts are accurate, this approach biases the index to the changes in the most common species.
I can’t see a reasonable accurate solution to the problem without better information that they have indicated in the report. So I remain skeptical to the magnitudes of the numbers given in the report. You might consider that as well… 🙂
Thanks Roman. That helps frame the issue. I was lust surprised at the absence of detailed illustrative examples to demonstrate how the index worked.
After the recent brouhaha regarding the debunked claim that the purplish-blue banded snail (Rhachistia aldabrae) in the Seychelles was extinct due to global warming, one would think that catastrophists would be more careful with their claims.
But no, they double down on unsupported drivel.
The report was in the “Climate Change March” pipeline. It had to come out on schedule no matter the drivel content.
Well if all these species are dying out then the WWF aint doing a very good job are they?
Moderated on the BBC for stating that WWF stood for World Wildlife fund for senior executives 🙂
Anyone have an idea how much their chairman gets?
“Invasive alien species harm native species through predation, as is the case of feral cats killing smaller creatures. Cats have been introduced to approximately 180 000 islands worldwide, and have a significant impact – in Britain alone, cats are estimated to kill 25-29 million birds every year.
The American mink was originally brought to Europe for fur farming. Many animals have since escaped or been intentionally ‘liberated’, so the species is now common in the wild in many areas of Europe. It is now outcompeting its European cousin in many areas, and has had devastating effects on local wildlife, particularly ground-nesting birds
Amphibians around the world are in decline, in part due to the invasive chytrid fungus. Other alien species can spread diseases, as is the case with the red swamp crayfish, which carries the ‘crayfish plague’. The disease often proves deadly to European crayfish, as they have not evolved to cope with the disease”
The Stephens Island wren or Lyall’s wren (Xenicus (Traversia) lyalli) was a nocturnal, flightless, insectivorous passerine belonging to the family of New Zealand wrens.[2][3] It was driven extinct, apparently by introduced cats, around 1900.[4]
However it once occurred all over New Zealand but was exterminated everywhere except on Stephens Island by the Polynesin Rat Rattus exulans introduced by the Maori c. 1280 AD.
http://www.amphibianark.org/the-crisis/chytrid-fungus/
Why is Bd Important?
Bd is a very important chytrid fungus because it appears to be capable of infecting most of the world’s approximately 6,000 amphibian species and many of those species develop the disease chytridiomycosis which is linked to devastating population declines and species extinctions (Berger et al., 1998; Skerratt et al., 2007; Fisher et al., 2009).
Question for the WWF: Which of these two countries is the one using more fossil fuel energy?
http://tazmpictures.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/haiti-border.gif
Clue – its the one that can afford to preserve its environment. i.e. the one using MORE fossil fuel.
Plus – if it weren’t for the elevated CO2 in the atmosphere – the picture would be browner on both sides.
Which one is listed as using more renewable energy?
The one on the left.
According to the UN, you get credit for burning trees, not for planting them.
People are sooooooo gullible.
Perhaps it’s just ignorance.
we eat MOST of the domestic animals raised for meat production before they ever reach their first birthday.
Cows are an exception, generally going 1.5 years.
Pigs, goats, lambs, chickens, rabbits, and many many more food animals are all consumed far before they reach age one.
It is similar for wild / feral game animals hunted sustainably for food.
A bow hunting club I belong to removes roughly half of the deer from a 1 square mile area in the Maryland suburbs every single year, and every year the population bounces right back.
High-income countries increase their biodiversity … you mean like how we’re now feeding our well-fed pets … cats and dogs … to wild coyotes.
And the coyotes have learned that a plump pet is easier to catch than a scrawny wild rabbit.
The WWF is gonna have a cow as the century progresses and Africa’s population explodes to match levels seen in Asia … and the farmers display an aversion to being fed to the native predators.
even more fun is to read the 2012 report and cross check data with this one, the change is so vast we are headed for doom in the next 4 years if you follow the changes, let alone the next 50 . E except of course for those areas like the temperate areas that are really making the difference, except it blames us for making the rest worse.
meanwhile the elephants are doomed, and thats only the ones that are dead, the rest will take well over 40 years at the pretend rate of killing they load in there.
where they get, and how they compare water usage by industy with ecological footprint I dont know.
Some outlets, like the BBC, are twisting this report to make it sound as though we are rapidly losing “species.” Sentences like, “The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought…” make it sound like a mass extinction event is going on. The WWF report refers to a large decline in population, not a large decline in the number of species.