Ecosystems on Earth at edge of catastrophe, biodiversity experts warn

Humanity is on the precipice” of shattering Earth’s limits, and will suffer huge costs if we fail to act on biodiversity loss, experts warn.

- Phoebe Weston

This week, world leaders meet in Cali, Colombia, for the Cop16 UN biodiversity conference to discuss action on the global crisis. As they prepare for negotiations, scientists and experts around the world have warned that the stakes are high, and there is no time to waste”.

“We are already locked in for significant damage, and we’re heading in a direction that will see more,’ says Tom Oliver, a professor of applied ecology at the University of Reading. Treally worry that negative changes could be very rapid.”

Since 1970, some studies estimate wildlife populations have declined on average by 73%, with huge numbers lostin the decades and centuries before. Passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets and Floreana giant tortoises are among the many species humans have obliterated. It’s shameful that our single species is driving the extinction of thousands of others,” says Oliver.

The biodiversity crisis is not just about other species humans also rely on the natural world for food, clean water and air to breathe. Oliver says: I think we will, certainly, inthe next 15 to 20 years, see continued food crises, and the real risk of multiple breadbasket failures that’s in addition toa lot of the other risks that might impact us through freshwater pollution, ocean acidification, wildfire and algal blooms, and so on.”Oliver, who is working with the UK government to identify chronic risks” to the world, was involved in a 2024 report that showed nature degradation could cause a 12% loss to UK GDP. Disease outbreaks, loss of insects to pollinate crops, collapse of fisheries and flooding were among risks cited. He says we are in an era of mass extinction with huge uncertainty in where the safe limits are”.

Scientists say human activity has pushed the world into the danger zone in seven out of eight indicators of planetary safety. Under a businessas-usual scenario, biodiversity loss will accelerate, with more species surviving only in zoos.