• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Friday, February 26, 2021
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

‘One Million Species Risk Extinction’ Uncertain and Misses Key Point

Stuart Pimm by Stuart Pimm
05/31/19
in Opinion
an elephant at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy at the foot of Mount Kenya

Photo: AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In early May, media outlets screamed another dire headline: “A million species at risk of extinction.” The news came from the press release of the U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a bureaucratic name long enough to require a deep breath before speaking it. Make that IPBES – “ip bess” for short. The work of more than a thousand scientists around the world, the complete report will surely weigh in at about a page each.

To be blunt, what does it say? Do we believe its conclusions? Why should we care? And what can we do about it?

Scientists struggle to explain their work to the media. I shudder when I hear claims of “the sixth mass extinction.” The previous one, number five, killed off the dinosaurs. It’s impossible to make sensible comparisons between now and 60 million years ago. I was relieved when IPBES didn’t use that expression. I was even happier when they didn’t talk about “global tipping points” beyond which human actions will lead to societal collapse. There’s no evidence for that; it is just more grandstanding to grab headlines.

Million Species

So, what about a million species at risk? It’s neither right nor wrong. It grabs attention, but is hugely uncertain and misses a key point. The problem is that we don’t know how many species there are on land and in the oceans. IPBES picks one of the many estimates – that there is a total of eight million species – and then a much more confident, but conservative estimate of one in eight being at risk.

Biodiversity loss around the world, measured in percentage compared to an intact ecosystem

Simply, we don’t have scientific names for more than two million species. Many millions more are unknown. There are huge uncertainties in how many kinds of fungi there are, for example. Why does that matter? I imagine the first baker of bread complaining how it got mold in a few days and fervently wishing it would go away. We now have a name for it: Penicillium.

What we don’t know might help us, our health, and our crops – or harm them. Do we have a scientific name for the aphid that’s transmitting a viral disease and destroying a crop? Or one for the tiny parasitic wasp that might control the pest?

Not knowing how many species there are – particularly fungi and insects – is a scientific problem that we should admit. Ignorance is not bliss.

Extinction Crisis

Nonetheless, we are certainly facing an extinction crisis. Delve into the report and it quickly embraces an insight my colleagues and I developed 25 years ago. Species are “born” through evolution and “die” via extinction. As with individual humans, it’s a matter of birth and death.

We know global birth and death rates for our species: about 18 births and 8 deaths per 1,000 individuals per year. (So our population is growing.) We can calculate comparable numbers for the life and death of species. By following the fate of species from when scientists first described them, we know that for the best-known species, the “death” rate is between 100 and 1,000 extinctions per one million species per year.

We know how quickly species are born from studying their DNA. Ancestors of humans and chimpanzees, for example, split four million years ago. These and many other studies show that yearly between 1 and 10 new species per ten million species appear.

Extinction and Climate Change

The IPBES report is important in that it provides an international consensus on this global loss of species. The parallels to the more familiar international panel on climate change, the IPCC, are obvious. We agree on the problem regardless of how we pitch it to the media.

Where IPBES and IPCC diverge is why we care and what we can do about it. Climate solutions must be global, but for the loss of species, it’s more complicated.

Three major sources of the carbon dioxide that now reach alarming concentrations in the atmosphere are the vehicles and industry of North America, those of Europe, and the burning of tropical forests. The various climate disruptions these cause, such as increased temperatures, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise, mean that actions in the U.S., Europe, and the Amazon harm people (and species) worldwide.

Youth activists protest for climate action, lead by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Youth activists protest for climate action, lead by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Photo: AFP

International consequences require international solutions, of course. Tropical forests hold about two-thirds of all known species, and likely an even greater share of the as-yet-unknown ones. The loss of tropical habitats harms species directly and indirectly as the heating climate forces species worldwide to live at higher elevations or higher latitudes when they can. Slowing tropical deforestation is an international priority for biodiversity and for minimizing climate disruption.

In contrast, why should people outside Africa care if lions go extinct? I’ve spent nights in a tent with lions prowling outside. I’ve seen how they can devastate a family’s livelihood by breaking into protective bomas at night and kill livestock. One readily understands how poor families would want lions to go extinct, or tigers in India, or countless less charismatic or even unknown species, for example on a steep hillside in Colombia that a farmer wants to clear for subsistence crops.

Why Should We Care?

The IPBES report details many reasons why everyone should care and why what nature does for us is valuable. The report also argues that there are ethical issues: what kind of planet do we want to pass onto our children and countless generations to come?

The challenge is to ensure that the benefits species provide go to the people who decide their fate. Can we ensure that the boma owner benefits from the ecotourist a few miles away staying in a $1,000 a night luxury resort? Can we find livelihoods that offer alternatives to clearing tropical forests? Ecosystem services may be valuable, but who is paying for them and to whom?

Answering these questions requires ineluctably local solutions. It requires finding ways to minimize the conflict between people and dangerous species. It requires finding the critical places where species are at risk of extinction and restoring damaged landscapes, their species, and the services they provide. This should provide local employment.

The state of Earth and its biodiversity is not good, but its future is not hopeless.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Stuart Pimm

Stuart Pimm

Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what we can do to prevent them

Related Posts

Extreme weather led to floods in Indonesia in 2018.
Environment

480,000 Killed by Extreme Weather This Century: Analysis

by Staff Writer
January 25, 2021
Jeff Bezos against a dark background
Business

Jeff Bezos Announces First Recipients of His $10 Billion Climate Fund

by Deon Feng
November 17, 2020
Rhinos in the Kahya Ndlovu Lodge in Hoedspruit, South Africa
Environment

World Wildlife Plummets More Than Two-Thirds in 50 Years: Index

by Staff Writer
September 11, 2020
Niger, one of the world's driest countries, also experiences intense rainfall and floods
Environment

65 Killed, 330,000 Left Homeless in Niger Floods

by Staff Writer
September 10, 2020
A woman and a boy walk past a flock of dead goats in a dry land close to Dhahar in Puntland, northeastern Somalia, December 15, 2016.
World

Deadly Under-The-Radar Heatwaves Ravaging Africa

by Staff Writer
July 14, 2020
Children stand among the rooftops of homes after the Yusuf Batir refugee camp in South Sudan was hit by flooding, November 2019
Opinion

World Refugee Day 2020: Is It Time for a New Refugee Convention?

by Ross Michael Pink and Luthfi Dhofier
June 19, 2020
Next Post
British Prime Minister Theresa May in front of an EU flag

May’s Resignation Has Increased Chance of UK Crashing Out EU With No Deal

US Strikes Against ISIS Camp in Libya Kill 17 Fighters

Detained Migrants, Babies Saved From Libya Clashes in Airlift to Rome

Recommended

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

February 26, 2021
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum, last August

Sudan’s Normalization With Israel Is a Win for Everyone

February 26, 2021
Ethiopian refugees who fled the conflict in Tigray gather to receive aid at the Tenedba camp.

Eritrean Troops Killed ‘Hundreds’ in Ethiopia Massacre: Amnesty

February 26, 2021
COVID-19 vaccine

Syria Health Workers to Receive Covid Vaccine From Next Week

February 25, 2021
Moria migrant camp which was destroyed in a fire in 2020 on the Greek Aegean island of Lesbos.

Pregnant Migrant Sets Herself on Fire in Greek Camp

February 24, 2021
HRW released a statement on China's increasing prosecution of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

China Targets Uighurs With More Prosecutions, Longer Prison Terms: HRW

February 24, 2021

Opinion

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

February 26, 2021
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum, last August

Sudan’s Normalization With Israel Is a Win for Everyone

February 26, 2021
Stolpersteine in Greifswald, Germany.

I Can’t Mark Where My Grandfather Is Buried, but I Want to Mark Where He Lived

February 26, 2021
Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley

Trump’s Acquittal and Republican Senators: Not Setting the Bar Low Enough

February 22, 2021
Why Not Equality for America’s Puerto Rican Men and Women?

Why Not Equality for America’s Puerto Rican Men and Women?

February 19, 2021
Refugee child holding up a sign reading 'we are human like you'

US Asylum Laws Must Catch up With the Reality of Today’s Refugees

February 18, 2021
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post