We've Put One Million Species At Risk Of Extinction, New U.N. Report Finds

Today, the world got a preview of the most comprehensive recon of biodiversity to date. Compiled by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the 1,800-page report is a compilation of three years of research on the status of the world's plant and animal species. Surprise, surprise—it's not looking great.

"The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture," IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson said in a summary of the upcoming report. "The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever."

Such a bleak prognosis calls for equally massive action. The report states that "the global goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors."

In other words, if we want to protect the natural world from shrinking quick, we need to shift the way we approach just about everything: how we grow our food, how we build our cities, and how we consume natural resources.

According to the scientists and policymakers who compiled the report, this will mean placing less importance on economic growth and instead making decisions based on their potential impact on nature. If this lofty vision sounds impossible on the surface, the report suggests policy that brings it back down to earth, such as working biodiversity measures into existing global frameworks like the Paris Climate Accord.

The IPBES report is the second one to come out of the United Nations Environment Program in the past year. In October, another by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that if global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world as we know it could be damaged beyond repair as soon as 2030. This foreboding message was a wake-up call that encouraged many nations to expedite timelines and strengthen goals related to climate change. Take the United Kingdom, which just cited the report as impetus for its proposal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.