KUCHING: The Living Planet Report (LPR) 2020 shows a two-thirds decline in the vertebrate species due to increasing destruction of nature by humans since 1970.
WWF has urged ending the environmental destruction for the sake of the wildlife and livelihoods of people.
“This catastrophic impacts not only wildlife populations but also human health and all aspects of our lives,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International.
“Nature is fundamental to humans and the destruction and the declining of wildlife populations will affect humans directly in terms of nutrition and food security.
“The main cause of this dramatic decline in species populations on land is due to habitat loss and degradation.”
LPR 2020 shows that without further efforts to counteract, global biodiversity will continue to decline.
“Our planet is flashing red warning signs of system failures,” he pointed out.
Due to this, LPR 2020 took the initiative to include pioneering modelling that showed stabilising and reversing the loss of nature was possible.
Lambertini said aside from the way people produced and consumed food, changes that needed to be done for the modelling to be successful included making food production and trade more efficient and ecologically sustainable, reducing waste and favouring healthier and more environmentally-friendly diets.
“The staggering decline in wildlife populations we are seeing can only be reversed through concerted will and actions, better understanding of the links between nature and human health and each of us using our natural resources more sustainably,” advised Sophia Lim, chief executive officer/executive director of WWF-Malaysia.
Although the global trade and economic growth have brought huge improvements in health and living standards for the last half century, they have also undermined the stability of the Earth’s natural systems and exacerbated global inequality.
WWF urged the leaders to take actions for global biodiversity before taking transformative decisions at a series of critical summits on the environment and climate in 2021.
