By David Adam
March 22, 2006
HUMANS have provoked the worst series of extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, says a United Nations report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address the slide.
The report paints a grim picture of life on earth, with declining numbers of plants and animals, and warns that the current extinction rate is up to 1000 times faster than in the past. About 844 animals and plants are known to have disappeared in the past 500 years.
Released on Monday to mark the start of a UN environment program meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, the report says: "In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth."
A rising human population of 6.5 billion is wrecking the environment for thousands of other species, it adds, and undermining efforts agreed at a 2002 UN summit in Johannesburg to slow the rate of decline by 2010. The global demand for biological resources now exceeds the planet's capacity to renew them by 20 per cent.
The report, Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says: "The direct causes of biodiversity loss - habitat change, over-exploitation, the introduction of invasive alien species, nutrient loading and climate change - show no sign of abating."
The Guardian, Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment