A sweeping report assessing the state of the natural world found that humans are having an “unprecedented” and devastating effect on global biodiversity, with about 1,000,000 animal and plant species now threatened with extinction. (1/5)
For instance, humans need food to survive. More than three-quarters of the world’s food crops rely, at least in part, on the activities of bees, wasps, butterflies and other pollinators, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The new U.N. report found that 10 percent of insect species are under threat.
Jessica Ware, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, said the situation for insects could be even more dire than recent research shows because scientists don’t have a good grasp of the number of insect species. In many cases, these changes are working in tandem to destroy animal and insect habitats or force species to migrate to other regions, where they may be ill-suited to survive.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services convened in Paris last week to finalize details of the assessment — the first to be released by the group since 2005.
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