Age of extinction: the race to save the planet

Human activity is threatening the delicate balance between the climate and biosphere. Which is why protecting biodiversity is as important as reducing carbon emissions.

Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria are the ancient, water-dwelling microbes responsible for the green scum often seen floating on lakes and rivers.

To the casual observer, these algae-like organisms may be appear to be a nuisance. But without them, the planet wouldn’t have its life-supporting atmosphere.

About 2.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria found ways to take energy from sunlight, consume carbon dioxide and pump oxygen as waste into the air. Over time, the oxygen levels on Earth increased, transforming the environment on a planetary scale.1

The Great Oxidation - as it is now known - allowed life on Earth to flourish and laid the foundations for the Holocene – an epoch whose distinguishing feature has been climate stability.

But the balance between the climate and biosphere is now under threat.

A problem is that politicians and businesses have treated climate change as the most pressing environmental concern. In doing so, they have overlooked the intimate relationship that exists between the climate and the biosphere.

Protecting biodiversity is just as important as reducing carbon emissions.

“If you turn back the clock, we can see biological processes shape the climate. Biodiversity helps the Earth system to stabilise,” says Dr Tim DuBois, researcher of earth systems and the Planetary Boundaries framework at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

“We now see this equilibrium under threat because we have another actor involved: humans.”

Ladybird

A ground-breaking 2019 UN report highlighted the severity of the threats facing biodiversity. It warned that one million animal and plant species are at imminent risk of extinction.

The research undertaken by Dr DuBois and his colleagues at the SRC paints a similarly alarming picture.

The SRC’s Planetary Boundaries model, which was developed in 2009 to measure environmental change across nine ecological dimensions, calculates that the rate of species loss is far above what historic records show is sustainable.

The model states that the loss rate for animals and plants must be below ten extinctions per one million species a year.

But the current pace of biodiversity loss is 100 times higher than this.

Another study led by SRC researchers investigated the link between biodiversity loss and climate change.2 They found that one directly influences the other in several ways. Most importantly, climate change negatively affects ecosystems by reducing their capacity to take up carbon.

The researchers calculate that this feedback loop will add an extra 0.4C to the world’s temperature by 2100. Worryingly, the link between the two is “not routinely included in projections of or policy for climate change,” the study said.

Purple orchid

"Messy and complicated"

There is no excuse for such an omission.

The world has in fact had a set of biodiversity targets for the best part of 10 years – long before the Paris Agreement on global warming came into effect.

Some 196 countries signed the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in 2010 with a commitment to meeting 20 strategic biodiversity goals by the end of that decade.

With that deadline almost certain to pass without success, policymakers are desperate to inject a new sense of urgency into efforts to halt biodiversity loss. The cancellation of this year’s UN summit on biodiversity gives them an additional incentive.

Specifically, policymakers are keen to agree on a set of quantifiable biodiversity targets for 2030. The draft recommendations include:3

• Retain and restore freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, increasing by at least 50 per cent the land and sea area under comprehensive spatial planning addressing land/sea use change
• Protect sites of particular importance for biodiversity through protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, covering at least 60 per cent of such sites and at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas
• Reduce pollution from excess nutrients, biocides, plastic waste and other sources by at least 50 per cent
• Contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation and disaster risk reduction providing about 30 per cent of the mitigation effort needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals

Dr DuBois says while the draft is a good starting point, it is important to recognise that protecting biodiversity requires a more nuanced approach than a blunt, Paris-style target.

“Climate change is straightforward by comparison. We have a number of known physical targets such as atmospheric CO2 concentration. Biology is messy and complicated, requiring cultural and value judgement,” he says.

“To get to biodiversity targets, we need to define direct and indirect forces – ecosystem, nature’s contribution to people and society and socio-ecological problems and how all these interact. We’re expanding that simple understanding (of the Paris Agreement) into a more nuanced earth system construct.”

Business and biodiversity

It's not just governments that can make changes; businesses also have a vital role to play in conserving nature.

Companies could, for example, include their biodiversity footprint or safeguarding targets in their quarterly reporting – which some French companies are already required by law to publish – or integrate species protection or habitat restoration into their growth and engagement policies.4

What is more, there is plenty of scope to boost investment in the environmental products and services industry, a rapidly evolving sector where innovation aimed at protecting and restoring the ecosystem is flourishing. There are already viable commercial opportunities emerging in areas such as pollination, water filtration, oxygen production and flood protection.

SRC biodiversity infographic

Scientists have estimated that the economic contribution of the natural world can amount to USD125 trillion a year.5

Dr DuBois urges individuals and businesses to make biodiversity matter on a daily basis.

“If we enable people to talk about biodiversity at the dinner table as clearly as we have with climate change, individuals can affect the business world and voters can affect the political world to drive the changes we need,” he says.

“In doing so we will increase our understanding of how we live on Earth and what it truly means to protect it.”

[1] B. E. Schirrmeister, J. M. de Vos, A. Antonelli, H. C. Bagheri. Evolution of multicellularity coincided with increased diversification of cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1209927110
[2] Lade SJ et al. (2019) Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change. Global Sustainability, 2, E21. doi:10.1017/sus.2019.18
[3] https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/efb0/1f84/a892b98d2982a829962b6371/wg2020-02-03-en.pdf
[4] The PB model shows that companies must limit the annual extinction rate within 0.13 per million species for every USD1 trillion of annual revenue. Source: Butz, C., Liechti, J., Bodin, J. et al. Sustainability Science (2018) 13: 1031. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0574-1
[5] Costanza, R., Groot, R., Sutton, P., Van der Ploeg, S. et al. (2014). Changes in the global value of ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change. 26. 152–158. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.002.