The report finds that three-quarters of land surfaces have been ‘severely altered’ by humans, including through deforestation (Picture: AFP)

Up to a million species face going extinct because of humans, a new UN report will say.

The loss of forests, clean air, clean drinking water, mangroves and pollinating insects is having a devastating effect on biodiversity.

We are about to see ‘an imminent rapid acceleration in the global rate of species extinction,’ the report will warn.

The pace of loss ‘is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years.


‘Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with extinction, many within decades.’

Biodiversity loss around the world measured in percentage compared to an intact ecosystem (Picture: AFP)

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report will be published on May 6, after delegates go through it line by line.



Wording may change, but the figures will remain the same.

Many experts think a so-called ‘mass extinction event’ – only the sixth in the last half-billion years – is already under way.

The most recent saw the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago, when a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid strike wiped out most lifeforms.

Animals on earth Scientists estimate that Earth is today home to some eight million distinct species, a majority of them insects. A quarter of catalogued animal and plant species are already being crowded, eaten or poisoned out of existence. The drop in sheer numbers is even more dramatic, with wild mammal biomass – their collective weight – down by 82 percent. Humans and livestock account for more than 95 percent of mammal biomass.

Climate change activists occupying Oxford Circus on April 18 (Picture: Getty)

The Summary for Policy Makers report says this loss of biodiversity poses as big a risk as climate change – and that the two are interlinked.

It distills a 1,800 page UN assessment of scientific literature into 44 pages.

Chairman of the UN body that compiled the report Robert Watson said: ‘We need to recognise that climate change and loss of Nature are equally important, not just for the environment, but as development and economic issues as well.

‘The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get from Nature.

He added that only ‘transformative change’ can stem the damage.

The reality of manmade impacts on wildlife was illustrated by a young humpback whale washed up on a Scottish beach after apparently becoming entangled in rope.

The 30ft creature was discovered on the shoreline at John Muir Country Park in Dunbar, East Lothian.

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