IPBESThis year, representatives of more than 160 governments, reaffirmed their commitment to address the biodiversity crisis by adopting @[email protected] proposals to regulate international trade in more than 500 new species. https://bit.ly/3XIc7nq #YearInReview #ForNature
Alexander Ruthol@ipbes
I mean, this is good, but it's not trade in animals which is causing the biodiversity crisis. Neither is it climate change.
It's habitat destruction.
@Je5usaurus_rex Actually you are both correct and incorrect. The five most important drivers of #biodiversity loss are (in order): land/sea use change; direct exploitation of species; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species (cf IPBES #GlobalAssessment )
@ipbes
AFAIK there is at present a grand total of 1 species believed extinct due to climate change, a rodent which lived on a sand bar off the coast of Australia.
Meanwhile, the Three Gorges Dam alone extinguished at least 17 species of vertebrates, including a freshwater dolphin, and god only knows how many have been extinguished by deforestation & wetlands reclamation.
Typically direct exploitation becomes a threat when habitat destruction has already reduced the population by 90% or so.
@Je5usaurus_rex Again please see the IPBES Global Assessment for three years of synthesis work by more than 200 of the worlds leading experts - the result of which was also the basis for the new Global Biodiversity Framework just adopted by 190+ countries at CBD COP15 in Montreal
@Je5usaurus_rex Climate change currently 3rd most significant driver of biodiversity loss - but expected to become the most significant driver by 2050. Cf. Also IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop report on #BiodiversityClimateScience: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-06/20210609_workshop_report_embargo_3pm_CEST_10_june_0.pdf
@ipbes
The report you linked is not a biodiversity report at all, it is a 'how to stop climate change' report. There's nothing in it about the biggest drivers of the current mass extinction, deforestation and dams, except in the context of carbon sequestration.
This is typical. Climate change has completely crowded out all other environmental issues. There isn't oxygen for anything else. Except possibly microplastics.