Saving The Planet Depends On A New Agriculture

Nature is essential for human existence, providing and sustaining the air, freshwater and soils on which we all depend. It also regulates the climate and provides pollination and pest control. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) ‘Living Planet Report 2020’, while more food and energy than ever before are supplied, overexploitation of plants and animals is increasingly eroding nature’s ability to provide these in the future.

Global economic growth over the past half-century has changed our world unrecognisably, driving exponential improvements in health, knowledge and standards of living. Yet this has come at a huge cost to nature and the stability of Earth’s operating systems that sustain us. Since 1970, global GDP has increased four times, the extraction of living materials from nature has tripled and the world’s human population has doubled, along with an enormous trend towards urbanisation. People living in cities now account for 50% of the global population.

Trade has exploded; the value of exports rose 200-fold from 1970 to 2017, with the largest increases in developed countries. This boom has enabled higher-income countries to increase their consumption even though nature, within their own boundaries, is relatively well protected; much of the added consumption is from nature’s contributions imported from lower-income countries, and these contributions are sometimes surrendered for little economic growth.

THE COST OF GROWTH

The biodiversity cost of the world’s expanding population and economic output has been significant. Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increasingly destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands, wetlands and other important ecosystems, threatening human well-being. Seventy-five percent of Earth’s ice-free land surface has already been altered significantly, most of the oceans are polluted, and more than 85% of the area of wetlands has been lost. This destruction of ecosystems has led to one million species (500 000 animals and plants and 500 000 insects) being threatened with extinction.