

UN Global Assessment the Latest Call to Action on the Impending Climate Crisis

(Unsplash photo by Tyler Lastovich)

By Midori Paxton

One million species are threatened with extinction. As the media reported on the recent Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, many friends and colleagues sent me shocked messages saying, “Did you see this?” “This is a disaster!” or something similar. Their words, my thoughts exactly!

This silent crisis has been going on for decades. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, and the United Nations Brundtland Report came out in 1987, both ringing warning bells about planetary crisis and welfare of future generations. Just like Cassandra, who, in the Ancient Greek legend, was blessed with the gift of prophecy but cursed in that nobody would believe her, people around the world have failed to heed or respond to increasingly frightening warnings of ongoing and future disaster.

Our current ecological meltdown is inextricably intertwined with many “other crises” — inequality and climate change, for example. The challenge of equal access to food with sufficient nutrition by the increasing global population, projected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, is one good illustration of how loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, inequality and climate crisis cannot be viewed and addressed as disparate issues.

The biggest drivers of biodiversity loss are degradation and loss of natural habitats to farming for food, fuel and timber, and overexploitation of plants and animals by humans, whether it be over-hunting, over-fishing or logging. Commodities such as palm oil, soy and beef are drivers of deforestation that leads to biodiversity loss. Agriculture and deforestation are responsible for around 25% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Variable weather patterns around the world cause havoc to farmers, especially those in subsistence or small-scale agriculture.

Some might say, “But we need food to stop hunger and ensure the health of the global population.” True enough, but nature is essential to achieve this: providing us with food, the water we drink, the climate we inhabit and the air we breathe. Our food system needs to evolve without further destruction of natural habitats and its fundamental base, and with equality at its centre.


The good news is that we have enough food and land. The problem is the current global food production and consumption system, with its unequal distribution and huge but avoidable waste. Tremendous progress has been made in poverty reduction, but more than a quarter of the present world population is affected by nutritional deficiencies, making them susceptible to long-term, irreversible health effects with damaging socio-economic consequences.

Around 98% of over 800 million malnourished people live in developing countries, while more than 1.4 billion people worldwide are overweight. Approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year, amounting to $2.6 trillion annually, with $700 billion in environmental costs and $900 billion in social costs.

A cattle ranch in Brazil. (Photo by Midori Paxton)

Already 60% of all mammals on Earth (in terms of biomass) are livestock, a major source of GHG emissions; 36% are humans, the biggest cause of massive GHG emissions; and just 4% of mammals on the planet are wild animals. The Global Assessment tells us that only a quarter of land on Earth is substantively free of the impacts of human activities. By 2050, that figure could drop to just one tenth.

Didn’t we hear this 30 years ago? Why didn’t the world act? Why do Greta and the young generation have to go on school strike? It is we, the adult population, who do not seem to be learning anything.

The Global Assessment also tells us that, at the same time, land degradation including forest loss through human activities is negatively affecting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, forcing people to migrate, while accelerating species extinction and loss of ecosystem services. Twelve million hectares of forest in the world’s tropical regions were lost in 2018, equivalent of 30 football fields per minute, causing massive GHG emissions. Didn’t we hear this 30 years ago? Why didn’t the world act? Why do Greta and the young generation have to go on school strike? It is we, the adult population, who do not seem to be learning anything.

Endemic black-faced impalas frolicking around waterhole, Namibia. (Photo by Midori Paxton)

What more do we need out of our planet? Do we really need more land? Can we afford to take more lands and pollute them, and in the process exterminate our cohabitants of the planet in the natural world? Can we stop now while there is still something to stop and options are there? Or do we only stop when we have to stop — because nothing is left?

In a world with only 10% allocated for natural habitats and wildlife, where will the water come from, what will fertilise our lands, pollinate our crops, maintain the balance that sustains our lives? In this future inequality will thrive, and everybody and everything will be poorer. The warnings are clear. It is time to heed our Cassandras.

Midori Paxton is head of ecosystem and biodiversity for the United Nations Development Programme.


The Time Has Come to Heed Nature’s Warning Bells was originally published in B the Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Originally posted on B the Change - Medium by Impakter.com.

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