New research indicates that Earth is likely to lose at least a tenth of its plant and animal species by the end of the century on current trends. Almost 3,000 scientists have called on governments to stop the destruction of nature.
In a paper published on Friday in Science Advances, researchers argue that “the climate crisis will drive an accelerating cascade of extinctions in the coming decades, as predators lose their prey, parasites lose their hosts, and temperature rises fracture Earth’s web of life.”
According to researchers, “six per cent of plants and animals will disappear by 2050 in a middle of the road emissions scenario, which the world appears to be heading for, rising to 13 per cent by the end of the century.”
In the worst-case scenario, scientists suggest, 27 per cent of plants and animals could disappear by 2100.
Dr Giovanni Strona, the lead author of the study, said: “We have populated a virtual world from the ground up and mapped the resulting fate of thousands of species across the globe to determine the likelihood of real-world tipping points.”
Prof Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia, on the other hand, said: “This study is unique because it accounts also for the secondary effect on biodiversity, estimating the effect of species going extinct in local food webs beyond direct effects. The results demonstrate that interlinkages within food webs worsen biodiversity loss.”
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“Think of a predatory species that loses its prey to climate change. The loss of the prey species is a ‘primary extinction’ because it succumbed directly to a disturbance. But with nothing to eat, its predator will also go extinct (a co-extinction). Or imagine a parasite losing its host to deforestation, or a flowering plant losing its pollinators because it becomes too warm. Every species depends on others in some way,” he said.
Some 2,700 scientists, in an open letter, have reportedly called for governments to tackle overconsumption of the Earth’s resources.
