Living Planet Report 2022

October 14, 2022

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

There has been a 69 per cent decline in the wildlife populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, across the globe in the last 50 years, according to the latest Living Planet Report by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The highest decline (94 per cent) was in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Africa recorded a 66 per cent fall in its wildlife populations from 1970-2018 and the Asia Pacific 55 per cent.
Freshwater species populations globally reduced by 83 per cent.
Habitat loss and barriers to migration routes were responsible for about half of the threats to monitored migratory fish species.
The Living Planet Index (LPI), featuring about 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world, showed that vertebrate wildlife populations are plummeting at a particularly staggering rate in tropical regions of the world.
Mangroves continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at a rate of 0.13 per cent per year.
Many mangroves are also degraded by over exploitation and pollution, alongside natural stressors such as storms and coastal erosion.
Around 137 square kilometres of the Sundarbans mangrove forest in India and Bangladesh has been eroded since 1985, reducing land and ecosystem services for many of the 10 million people who live there.

WWF identified six key threats to biodiversity —

Agriculture
Hunting
Logging
Pollution
Invasive Species
Climate change

To highlight ‘threat hotspots’ for terrestrial vertebrates.

About Living Planet Report

The Living Planet Report 2022 is a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet.
It is an annual flagship World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) publication.
It is the world’s leading, science-based analysis, on the health of our planet and the impact of human activity.
It links climate change and biodiversity loss for 1st time. Biodiversity loss and climate crisis should be dealt with as a single issue.