Trends in Extinction from Climate Change
The Art
The Science
What’s Alarming
The 2019 Global Assessment Report* from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds that around 1 million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction; in many cases this could happen within decades. Currently climate change is the third most significant driver of these threats, after changes in land and sea use (e.g., deforestation) and “direct exploitation of organisms” (e.g., overfishing). However, the report notes that, over the coming decades, climate change impacts are likely to surpass all other drivers of these threats.
“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.” IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson
*The report, which assesses changes over the last 50 years, is the most comprehensive ever on the subject, compiled by 145 experts from 50 countries with inputs from another 310 contributing authors and review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources.
Graph source: IPBES (2019): Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. S. Brondízio, H. T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. A. Brauman, S. H. M. Butchart, K. M. A. Chan, L. A. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J. Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. F. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A. Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. Roy Chowdhury, Y. J. Shin, I. J. Visseren-Hamakers, K. J. Willis, and C. N. Zayas (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. Figure SPM 3. 56 pages. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3553579 