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Living Planet Report reveals catastrophic wildlife decline

  • Date: 10 October 2024

In today’s special bonus episode of Nature Breaking you’ll hear all about WWF’s 2024 Living Planet Report. This bi-annual report functions as a check-up on the health of the Earth. Underpinning the report is the Living Planet Index, which monitors populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish around the world. This year the report found that monitored wildlife populations declined by an average of 73% since 1970.

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Importantly, this year’s report also reveals that the Earth stands on the verge of tipping points for tropical forests and coral reefs that could have severe consequences for people and nature everywhere. Joining the show to explain the Living Planet Report is Dr. Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist. Rebecca will walk us through the methodology of the report, what its key findings really mean for wildlife and ecosystems, and what we all can do together to put our planet on a more sustainable pathway.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Seth Larson: Welcome to Nature Breaking, a World Wildlife Fund podcast focused on news and trends affecting our natural world and the people and species who call it home. I'm Seth Larson. And today, you're getting a special bonus episode of the show outside of our usual every-other-Tuesday release schedule. That's because today, WWF released its 15th biannual Living Planet Report, which functions as a checkup on the health of the Earth.

It's the flagship report that WWF is most known for, so I wanted to get this one out to our listeners as soon as possible. The Living Planet Report monitors populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish around the world. This year, the report found that monitored populations declined by an average of 73 percent since 1970. We'll dive into what that really means shortly, but it's obviously a shocking loss in less than a single lifetime.

Importantly, this year's report also reveals that the Earth stands on the verge of tipping points for tropical forests and coral reefs that could have severe consequences for people and nature everywhere. But the report isn't just a chronicle of doom and gloom. It also provides a roadmap for addressing the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, with a particular focus on the actions we need to take in the next five years to turn things around.

Joining me to dig into this today is Dr. Rebecca Shaw, WWF's Chief Scientist. Rebecca will walk us through the methodology of the report, what its key findings really mean, and what we can all do together to put our planet on a more sustainable pathway.

Before we begin, please take a moment to subscribe to our show. If you haven't already, you can do that on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Thanks for listening. And now here's my conversation with Rebecca.

Okay. I'm joined now by Dr. Rebecca Shaw, WWF's chief scientist. Rebecca, welcome back to Nature Breaking. It's great to have you again.

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, it's great to be here again, Seth. Thanks for the invite.

Seth Larson: So you were last on this show back in 2022 to talk about the release of the previous Living Planet Report. And I know we, we spent some time in that episode talking about the ins and outs of the methodology and what the LPR is all about, what it tells us. But for the sake of our listeners today, can you just briefly remind us about the basics behind the Living Planet Report and how we should understand it?

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah. Um, thanks for that question. It's a really good one. So the LPR, which is the Living Planet Report comes out every 2 years, as you said. And the Living Planet Index which supports the Living Planet Report, is an index that follows wildlife populations across the world. And what we've seen in the last, uh, 50 years, since 1970, is the 73 percent decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations. So, our partners actually, our partners, the Zoological Society of London, they analyze the data and compute this number by averaging together the data on the changes in population size of wild animals. So that includes mammals, reptiles, fish, amphibians and birds across the world, um, between 1970 and 2020, to understand how they're changing. And I think a key thing to remember about the Living Planet Index, which gives us the 73 percent decline, is that it collects data from 35,000 populations

of 5,500 species. That means, say for tigers, which we, WWF works on to increase their populations around the globe, we might have, um, that one species, but there may be 20 different populations.

And so we look at the population trends of that one species. And we do that for many, many species around the globe.

Seth Larson: Right. And some of those populations might be very large and some populations might just be a few animals. Right. Um, but it's the, it's the average of all of those populations taken together.

Rebecca Shaw: That's right.

Seth Larson: Um, and so, thanks for walking through that. Uh, I know every year, every two years when we release this report, there's always a lot of media coverage of that topline number, the average decline. Two years ago, uh, it reported a 69 percent decline since 1970. So 73 percent represents a 4 percent increase. Um, is there anything you can tell us about what's behind that increase?

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, that, uh, what the report details is the, um, not just what's happening to these, um, wildlife populations around the globe, but what are the key drivers of those changes and what's happening around the world is we're really, uh, destroying habitat, over harvesting wildlife, and creating climate change that is incompatible with their survivability.

And so, what we, what we, uh, see is that we're doing more of the things that promote the decline of wildlife populations globally. And we are facing dangerous environmental tipping points because of that.

Seth Larson: And I, I want to dive into that a lot more in just a minute, but I think as we're getting into this topic, a baseline question that a lot of people might be wondering is why does this matter? You know, why, why should any of us care about this? What do these numbers tell us about the state of the planet and the state of people and our ability to continue to live here?

Rebecca Shaw: You know, I think it's really, um, important to understand that when we measure wildlife populations, we're measuring, uh, it's an early warning indicator for nature's decline.

And what I think some people might, or many people do realize, but some might not realize, is that nature, when it's thriving and healthy and you have healthy populations of animals and plants and soil microorganisms, deliver a lot of amazing services to us.

So clean air, clean water, uh, plenty of water to drink and to grow food. Um, it actually protects us from the worst of the storms. It also stabilizes the climate and makes sure that we have a stable climate to be able to thrive. If we continue to destroy nature, uh, wildlife populations, plant populations, soil microorganism populations, at the speed that we've been destroying them, nature will no longer be able to provide those benefits. And that means you begin to affect human health and well-being globally. And we're actually seeing this around the globe. You can't go on social media or watch the news or listen to the radio without a headline about raging wildfires in one part of the globe or storms and floods that have gone out of control in another part or crop failures in another part of the globe.

All this is connected to the decline of nature and the increasing instability of the Earth's climate.

Seth Larson: Yeah. And you mentioned a moment ago tipping points, which is a big theme of this year's Living Planet Report. And actually one of the key tipping points identified in the report focuses on the Amazon rain forest and how close we may be to a tipping point there. Um, you just talked about all of the, the climate and nature records that we've been seeing in, in recent months. As we're recording this in late September, there have been devastating wildfires ripping through the Amazon rain forest, very severe drought in that region of the world um, that's, that's pretty unprecedented. Um, so I want to talk more about this, this notion of tipping points. And I'd love for you to just tell us what the report says about tipping points in the Amazon, as well as I know it also focuses on the state of coral reefs around the world and how the reef ecosystems could be facing a tipping point as well. What does the report find about those tipping points and how could those tipping points impact people?

Rebecca Shaw: So just to back up some, most of the times when people hear about the concept of tipping point, they think of catastrophic existential climate threats and what, um, we have really seen the science grow in the last 5 years around is that it's not just, there are, there are both these global, you know, existential threats that are tipping points that are climate derived. But there's also tipping points that are derived by the systematic destruction of nature. And then also the connection of the destruction of nature with climate change. So you get the destruction of nature and you add on climate change and you have these, um, regionally significant tipping points. And so the declines in wildlife population, like those in the Living Planet Report, are early warning indicators that our ecosystems are in trouble and on the verge of irreversible change known as tipping points. So, as you said, we are at risk of losing the Amazon rain forest and mass deaths of coral reefs. And if we reach these tipping points, they could cause irrevocable damage to the environment and create shock waves far beyond the immediate areas that they impact and impact food security and livelihoods around the world.

And this is particularly true of the Amazon tipping point. We all know that the Amazon rain forest is massive and people have called it the lungs of the Earth. And the reason why they're called that lungs of the Earth is because it produces a lot of oxygen, but also because it takes in a lot of CO2 and stores it in the soils and trees and dense, dense trees with hardwoods. But the Amazon is being deforested and degraded by selective harvesting, and it's edging closer to a tipping point, um, that where it could tip into a grassy savanna. And this happens because you get, It's, it's death by a thousand cuts, really, is you just keep destroying the Amazon. The Amazon does not transpire, and transpire is just a scientific word for taking water out of the soil and pushing it back into the air, where it becomes rain and it cycles over and over again. The more trees you take out of the Amazon, the less rainfall there is. That means the less uh, tropical forest there can be. And so you get this runaway cycle that is called a tipping point that turns it from a very wet rain generating climate controlling rain forest, to a grassy savanna that doesn't produce rainfall for the entire region and for the Amazon. And that can even affect, it releases a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere and can even affect, uh, weather patterns around the globe, having implications for food production way far away from the Amazon. So it's the kind of terrestrial or, or land-based tipping point that's regional that has global effects that can be very, very significant.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Um, and I'm, I'm sure that the loss of the Amazon is a personal priority of yours. I, I think you spent some of your early career in the Amazon doing research. Right? Am I right that, that you sort of lived on a raft or a boat in the Amazon region and did a lot of research and witnessed a lot of change, right?

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, I was down there. I was down there as a research assistant early in my career and lived on a floating raft on one of the lakes that actually becomes part of the river during high water season when the rains get really intense and the river expands exponentially. Um, yeah, a floating raft and I'd be woken every morning by the pink freshwater dolphins that live in the Amazon because everything would be still and clear and you'd just hear their spout as they come as they come up and I'd be sleeping on the inside of this little hut with a, with a corrugated tin roof that was deafening during those tropical storms.

Um, yeah. But it was, it was beautiful. But during that time I was there, um, there was a big cry, international cry to save the Amazon rain forest. And eventually that cry really had really big impact in that lots of the Amazon ended up being conserved. But as we see now, deforestation rates have increased again, and we're seeing more and more wildfires.

And that coupled with climate change is really taking us even closer to a potential tipping point in the Amazon rain forest. 17 percent of the rain forest is already deforested. The modeling exercises, the best modeling exercises that have been done, say that if we reach somewhere between 20 percent and 24 percent of the rain forest gone, that we will experience this tipping point.

So I think that one of the most important things we're trying to say at WWF is let's not reach that tipping point. Let's stop the deforestation now. Protect the wildlife species that are an integral part of that rain forest ecosystem and make sure that the Amazon rain forest can, uh, can continue to help, mediate climate change, uh, produce food and, and support the people living there.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Absolutely. So another new addition in this year's Living Planet Report was a species-specific breakdown for selected animal populations that helps to illustrate the cause and effect between people and wildlife. Not only how our actions can harm or help animals, but also how their decline can affect us as people.

Um, I know, for example, the report shares how a decline in parrotfish in the Mesoamerican reef really degraded reefs, which people rely on for nutrition and jobs in that region. And, and there are other examples as well. What do those examples tell us about how People can impact different animal populations, but also how the health of animal populations can affect us.

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, it’s really important to know that these animal populations, wildlife populations, are an important part of the functioning of the ecosystems and these ecosystems provide us benefits. So for example, you mentioned the Mesoamerican reef and the parrotfish. Parrotfish are these really beautiful fish and they're bright blue and green and yellow and reds.

They're so beautiful and they have a really hard beak and they will munch on the algae at the tops of the coral reefs all day long, making sure to keep those coral reefs clear so that they can grow and provide habitat and food for the fish populations. When the parrotfish are overfished to provide food for tourism and food for local populations... when they're overfished and not carefully managed, the algae is runaway. It overgrows all of the coral reefs. The coral reefs are suffocated and they end up dying. And so you can have, when you have coral reefs die, you will have mass die offs of all the fish and all the vertebrates and all the fish production from that coral reef.

So you get these cascading effects when you lose wildlife populations. And so we have lots of stories in this LPR that makes the link between a wildlife population like parrotfish to the functioning of an ecosystem, the coral reef production, and delivery of habitat for multiple species, to the ecosystem decline, and therefore the reduction. So the reduction of fisheries, and fish production. So you can see there's a link, a through line. So we saw that with, with the parrotfish. We see that in other ecosystems around the globe. And so we really tell the story in this LPR like we haven't done, we haven't done, um, adequately in the past between how important it is to understand that wildlife populations are an early warning indicator of nature's decline that takes us closer and closer to tipping points, particularly in the context of an unstable climate or climate change.

Seth Larson: Yeah, I really love seeing the evolution of this report. I've worked at WWF for seven years now. I'm hardly a historian on it. I know this is our 15th edition, so if my math is right, I guess we've been releasing these for 30 years, right? Uh, if they're every other year. But it seems like the last couple of reports and this one in particular, even more so, are really taking the time to not just say, this is, this is what we've observed in terms of species populations. They're also going that next step to really make the connection between that observation or that measurement and what's driving it and what the fallout can be if we don't stop it. So I love seeing that evolution. I know you were very connected to the development of this year's report. I don't know if you have any thoughts or observations about, um, sort of that evolution and how this year's report came together?

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, I think, so you spoke to the history of the LPR. I think one of the most important things that we did with this report, uh, this year was we said we need to bring this headline indicator, the 73 percent decline in wildlife populations, alive so that people understand the implications for that.

Not just say it, that it's an early warning indicator, but show it and show it in ecosystems with the data around the world. And I really want to thank so many researchers and scientists around the globe who have been collecting the data that allow us to accumulate it into the LPI that allow us to make the connection between a decline in a wildlife population and the impact on the ecosystem health and its benefits to people that we couldn't have told this story 30 years ago because the science wasn't there.

The science is here now and we are telling it. And what we really did in this um, in this report was to synthesize the best science that came out since 2020 to say, here's where we are now. Here are the connections between wildlife populations and the decline of ecosystem benefits to people. And here's the connection between the decline in nature and a changing climate.

And here's what we're facing if we don't begin to apply the solutions that we have at hand now.

Seth Larson: Yeah. As a communications professional, I just find it so helpful and so important to be able to paint that holistic picture for people so that it's not just a number. It feels more real and more tangible, and hopefully inspires more action. So, you know, for all the grim statistics that the Living Planet Report does embody, it’s also pretty optimistic that we actually have the tools and the strategies available to turn things around.

I'd love for you to walk us through some of the key strategies that we're recommending through the Living Planet Report to stop the loss of species and to address climate change and to stop the loss of nature. What are some of those key recommendations?

Rebecca Shaw: Again, I want to say just like the science that we synthesize, the science was out there. We pulled it together. We also pulled together the solutions that lots of people have been working on. And we actually know what to do. And a lot of things have already happened. They're not just, they're just not happening fast enough and in enough places around the globe with enough people. So the solutions part of the report really leans in on our need to do conservation at greater scales, to tackle the greatest drivers of change, how we produce, consume, and waste food and energy, and to make sure that we reform our financial systems that actually spend so much more money undermining nature and the climate than they do trying to produce a nature positive world and a stable climate.

All that stuff has to come together. Uh, conservation at greater scales, reform our energy and our food systems, the way we produce, consume and waste energy. And also our finance system. So conservation, we need a huge increase in protected area and restored areas, um, in the next 6 years to stop nature loss and begin to restore biodiversity. Currently, protected areas cover only 16 percent of the planet's lands and 8 percent of the oceans. This put us nowhere near achieving the agreed upon protection levels of 30 percent lands and waters and sea by 2030 that is spelled out by the Global Biodiversity Framework, which is a framework that most of the nations of the globe have signed up to in 2022. So we gotta, we got to get so much better at that. And we also need to make sure that we take into account the rights and needs and values of Indigenous peoples and local communities so that what we do in conservation is inclusive and equitable to ensure that it can be enduring.

Um, then the food system. I think people scratch their heads when you, when you say one of the biggest drivers of change is the way we produce, consume and waste food. But no kidding, for nature loss, it is the greatest driver of change. Our food system is the leading cause of habitat loss, which is why we have such huge losses in wildlife populations around the globe. It accounts for 70 percent of all the water use. It's responsible for one quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of all deforestation, particularly in tropical forests like the Amazon. So, not only is our current food system significantly contributing to nature loss, it's also undermining our ability to feed people. So, consumption patterns have got to change. We've got to think differently about what we consume, how we produce our food. So stop deforestation, stop deforesting the Amazon rain forest to, to graze cattle for cheap hamburgers. Um, it's really important that we know where our food comes from, if we care where our food comes from and making sure that we are making choices that don't contribute to the problem. Um, we, we got to make sure that we can provide people healthy, nutritious food without undermining climate and nature, and it means adopting more sustainable diets, reducing food loss and waste.

You might be surprised to know that 40 percent of all the food that's produced is actually wasted. If that's the case, it's either wasted on the way to the supermarket, in the supermarket, or in the restaurants and food service places. And so we need to make sure that we're producing food efficiently, that whatever we buy, we're actually consuming, and so that we're consuming sustainably produced foods and that we're doing so in a way that doesn't waste it.

And it's the same exact thing for the energy sector. Um, the way we produce, consume, and, and waste energy is a real problem, and fossil fuels contribute to 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. We're going in the right direction. Renewables are fast increasing, but we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and that's just five years away, to keep ourselves under 1.5 degrees Celsius at a global scale. So if we triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, and modernize our energy grids, we have a real chance of meeting that target.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Thank you for walking through all that. It sounds daunting. Um, but if you take each piece individually, there are strategies out there, um, to tackle each of those things. Um, and you know, I think our listeners of this podcast are going to hear a lot about the food sector in particular this month.

The previous episode, we just interviewed Jason Clay talking about his new initiative to change our approach to how food is traded and produced globally. Um, and food loss and waste is a huge, huge problem. I know it's something I stress about in my personal life. I've got a five year old son at home who, you know, every morning we talk about what he's going to have for breakfast and he'll ask for, you know, toast and an egg and a banana and sometimes he'll eat all of it, but sometimes he'll have one bite of each of those things and say he's done. And I pull my hair out every time, uh, thinking “I work for an environmental organization, I can't throw this food away.” Um, it's, the reality is, like, we all have a responsibility to do as much as we can. And, and one thing I'm starting to do with my son is say, we're going to pick two things, and if you finish those, then you can have a third thing for breakfast. Um, but, uh, I think we all, we all need to do what we can, but also be kind to ourselves when it doesn't work out perfectly. Um, but certainly there's a lot more that governments and global bodies can do to speed up these sort of global changes that need to happen. And, and on that front, you started out your last answer by talking about the Global Biodiversity Framework.

And and I'm glad you brought that up because my last question was going to be about the Global Biodiversity Framework and the meeting that's coming up in about 10 days from when this episode comes out. And that's the UN biodiversity conference in Colombia, which is known as CBD COP16.

Um, and the CBD COP, Convention on Biological Diversity, Conference of the Parties, the 16th meeting. Uh, that at the previous meeting two years ago in Montreal, uh, this Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted. It set a goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030. And when all of the governments that set that agreement meet again in Colombia, uh, at the, toward the end of October, I think it starts on October 21st, they will be, presenting their progress, talking about what they've done so far to meet that goal and, um, and, and taking stock of how much more work needs to be done. And I don't want to get all the way into it because I'm going to actually devote a whole episode of this, uh, of this podcast next week to talking about that conference, but this report certainly seems to indicate that the world has a lot of work to do in dealing with both the climate and nature crises going into COP 16.

So what would you hope that the leaders heading to Colombia take away from the Living Planet Report?

Rebecca Shaw: So the, the Living Planet, WWF's Living Planet Report, um, pulls, it’s a synthesis of what needs to be done. I think one of the most important things about the report is it puts everything that needs to be done to address the drivers of the loss of wildlife and ecosystem benefits for people into one place. And it says, here's what we need to be doing both as national governments, as the private sector and as individual citizens to make things happen to advance that agenda. So, the, the, um, both the biodiversity framework that, that they're going to be discussing in Colombia next month in October, and the climate meeting in November. Both have to address the fact that they have very ambitious goals, and a lot of commitments against those goals, but very little action. So the framework is there for to, uh, stem the loss of biodiversity and nature, to stop climate change and to change the financing that drives both of those. And the commitments are there, but the action isn't actually there at all. So, governments need to step up, make sure that their plans for taking action to, uh, secure biodiversity and to stop climate change, they need to actually follow through on the commitments and make action that can get us to nature positive by 2030 and halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. So we need the commitments and the action. And so what I would be looking for next, next month's COPs are that we're seeing, real tangible actions and plans for implementing those actions, and the financing for those actions to make sure things happen. And that it's aligned with what the private sector is doing, and the private sector is making commitments and actually following through on those commitments. And that there's real clear direction for what concerned citizens around the globe can do to make a change as well. We can do a lot at WWF, but we can't do it all. We need the nations of the world to step up. We need the private sector to step up and we need our communities around the globe to take the kind of actions that they know they need to take to create a stable and sustainable planet.

Seth Larson: That's great. Rebecca, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate all of your insights on this and, um, have a great day. Thank you for your time.

Rebecca Shaw: Yeah, thank you so much, Seth. I look forward to the next time.

Seth Larson: Thank you to Rebecca for joining the show today, and thanks also to my colleagues who've been working to prepare the Living Planet Report itself and to plan for its public launch.

This report really matters because of what it reveals about the state of our natural world and the effect that we as people are having on it. But as Rebecca said, the report also tells us a lot about what we can do to secure a better future. So please take a moment to read the report and think about how you as an individual, as a community member, and as a citizen can do to make a difference.

I'll include the link to the report in our show notes for easy access. And together, let's keep building a more sustainable future.

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