New research renders biodiversity loss on global scale. File photo by NASA/UPI |
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LONDON, April 3 (UPI) -- Biodiversity is on the decline. A new study confirms as much nearly every week. Plants are increasingly vulnerable in New England. Coral is under threat. Invasive species are pushing out natives.
A new study has once again delivered bad news, this time on global scale. New research by scientists at London's Natural History Museum renders local biodiversity losses as a comprehensive figure. But the study -- aided by a number of British universities and the United Nations -- also offers a bit of silver lining. Calculations suggest a carbon market would reverse the worrisome trends.
Scientists arrived at their initial calculations by amassing the findings of biodiversity studies from around the world. They looked at some 280 scientific publications, including studies concerning some 26,593 different species. Their number crunching posited that the average local ecosystem as lost 14 percent of its species as a result of land-use change -- with the majority of losses occurring in the last 100 years.
But 14 percent was only the world average -- an average buoyed by isolated pockets of the tropics where biodiversity remains strong. Some regions are faring much worse.
Western Europe has lost somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of its species diversity, researchers found. Many scientists believe 20 percent is the tipping point for when ecosystems begin to break down and become unhinged, failing to offer the protections and natural resources that humans rely on.
"For example as biodiversity declines, outbreaks of crop pests become more likely," Andy Purvis, lead scientist and biodiversity expert at the museum, explained in a press release. "We can spray crops and spend money to reduce that risk but that is basically compensating for something that biodiversity used to provide before."
Expanding on their initial research, the scientists plugged their numbers into a computer model and applied a variety of formulas in an attempt to predict future biodiversity losses. The model forecast that staying the course (doing nothing) would result in another 3.5 percent loss by the end of the century. Some of the poorest countries, researchers found -- countries with immense biodiversity -- would be the worst hit.
But the same model calculated the effects of incorporating a carbon market concept -- thereby forcing economic models to account for the true price of the forest -- and found biodiversity trends could be reversed.
"If society takes concerted action, and reduces climate change by valuing forests properly," Purvis said, "then by the end of the century we can undo the last 50 years of damage to biodiversity on land."
The new research was published this week in the journal Nature.
