On November 4th, the most important event in recent years at our University will take place at the Unicamp Convention Center regarding humanity's most crucial problem, alongside the climate emergency: the maintenance and recovery of the weakened foundations biodiversity, in Brazil and on the planet as a whole. The meeting, titled Biodiversity is not a problem, it is a solution!, is an initiative of the BIOTA Program, the Brazilian Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES) and the Executive Directorate for Human Rights, of the Rectory. [1] It will bring together six of the most active and experienced biodiversity researchers, linked to Brazilian Universities and Research Institutes.
Click to access the schedule
After statements by the rector and scientific director of Fapesp, Carlos Alfredo Joly (IB and NEPAM), full member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), as well as coordinator from the Brazilian Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Platform (BPBES), will give the opening lecture. After this preliminary presentation, Maíra Padgurschi will present the Brazilian Diagnosis on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, based precisely on the BPBES results. Maíra Padgurschi is a member of the Ecosystem Services Partnership/ESP network and Young Ecosystem Services Specialists/YESS. Since 2015, she has served as Executive Secretary of BPBES and is a member of its Technical-Scientific Council. Furthermore, he carries out post-doctoral research at the National Institute for Amazon Research/INPA through the AmazonFACE Program. Afterwards, Cristiana Seixas will give a lecture entitled “Contributions of nature to quality of life”. Specialist in environmental management, with an emphasis on the interface between natural resources and social well-being, Cristiana Seixas is a researcher at NEPAM/Unicamp, co-coordinated the Regional Diagnosis of the Americas of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and is part of the Executive Coordination of BPBES.
In the afternoon, Kayna Agostini, Professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (Araras campus), will take stock of the growing pollination crisis in Brazilian agriculture. Right away, Renato Crouzeilles will take stock of reforestation in Brazil and, finally, Vinícius Farjalla, from UFRJ, will include a fundamental variable in the panorama of Brazilian biodiversity, the issue of water. The Summary for Decision Makers of all diagnoses that will be presented on the 04th are available for download on the BPBES page.
A little context: BPBES and IPBES
It is important to keep in mind the context in which this meeting on the 4th takes place, as this is what allows us to better understand its exceptional importance. BPBES is part of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, by Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). As you know, this Platform was officially established in 2012 at the request of governments and placed under the auspices of four UN bodies.[2] In its brief seven-year history, IPBES has established itself as an unavoidable reference in assessing the decline of biodiversity, the most crucial aspect, alongside the climate emergency, and the socio-environmental crises in which contemporary societies are sinking more and more rapidly ( but there is still time to react!).
Practically all countries of the international community participate today in the annual Plenaries of this Platform, its highest deliberative body, either as full members (132 countries) or as observers, in addition to other participants, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), other international Conventions, agencies and accredited NGOs. This is how IPBES, whose motto is “Science and Politics for Nature and People”, defines its reason for being and its objectives:[3]
[The IPBES] “provides governments with objective scientific assessments of the state of knowledge regarding the planet's biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits they provide to people. It also provides governments with the tools and methods to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets. Our mission is to strengthen the foundations of knowledge for better science-informed governance, for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development. To some extent, IPBES does for biodiversity what the IPCC does for climate change.”
Launch of the Summary of the 1st IPBES Report
On May 6 this year, IPBES launched in Paris the Summary of its 1st Assessment Report on the state of global biodiversity. This document takes into account around 15 thousand government studies and reports, integrating information from social sciences and natural sciences, as well as information from indigenous and traditional communities. A press release like this summarizes its content:
“Nature’s dangerous decline is unprecedented. The rate of species extinction is accelerating. Today's global response to this process is insufficient. Transformative changes are needed to restore and protect nature. Opposition to financial interests (vested interests) must prevail for the public good. This is the most comprehensive assessment of biodiversity: 1.000.000 species are threatened with extinction.”
What does one million extinct species mean, quantitatively, in the context of our planet's biosphere? There is growing consensus regarding the magnitude of planetary biodiversity, at least with regard to the taxonomic domain of eukaryotes or eukaryotes, species with cells equipped with a nucleus surrounded by a well-defined membrane and, therefore, with DNA separated from the cytoplasm. So, for example, Rodolfo Dirzo, Mauro Galetti and Ben Collen, in a work entitled “Defaunation in the Anthropocene” (Science 2014), implicitly subscribe to this emerging consensus: “Starting from a conservative estimate of the existence of 5 to 9 million animal species on the planet, we are probably losing around 11.000 to 58 thousand species per year”. TIPBES also works with this scale of biodiversity. Andy Purvis, coordinator of one of the chapters of the global diagnosis prepared by IPBES, states: [4]
“Across a wide and growing range of taxonomic groups, about 25% of species are threatened with extinction when assessed using the well-established and transparent IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Red List criteria. Some groups exhibit a higher proportion, others a lower proportion, but the 25% average is well established. The percentage of threatened insects may well be lower (which is relevant because around 75% of species are insects), but evidence from the most studied insects (dragonflies globally and bees, butterflies and some beetles in Europe) suggests that it is unlikely to be much below 10%. There is still no agreement on exactly how many species there are: around 1,7 million species of animals and plants have been described, but most estimates of the total number of species are more than twice that number. In the Assessment, we use a recent low to medium estimate of 8,1 million animal and plant species, of which around 5,5 million are insects (i.e. 75%) and 2,6 million are not. Therefore, 10% of the 5,5 million insects are 550.000 and 25% of the 2,6 million are 625.000. Due to the inaccuracy in the estimates, there is no point in providing the total more accurately than 1 million threatened animal and plant species.”
Therefore, losing around 1 million species means losing 12,5% of the planet's total animal and plant biodiversity, estimated at 8,1 million eukaryotic species. And be careful: this catastrophic rate of extinction does not occur in the distant future, but “in the next few decades”, says IPBES. This total number of extinctions includes 10% of insects, but also 40% of amphibians and 33% of corals, sharks and marine mammals, as shown in the table below.
The report further estimates that 5% of all these species will be threatened with extinction in a climate, on the global average, 2oC above the pre-industrial period, that is, 0,8oC above the present, a warming that could be reached at some point. of the second quarter of the century (already around 2030 in Brazil[5]), unless greenhouse gas emissions decline promptly and drastically.
Two examples of catastrophic population loss
Every extinction begins, of course, with the loss of abundance of populations of a given species. According to a work published in October 2019 in the magazine Science, about 3 billion birds have disappeared in the USA and Canada, in all different biomes and among species with populations still considered abundant (29% of assessed populations) since 1970.[6]
Pollinators provide a second example of catastrophic population loss. The Red List of species threatened with extinction IUCN indicates that 16% of vertebrate pollinators are threatened with global extinction and 30% of species found on islands, with a tendency for more extinctions. National and regional assessments indicate high threat levels for bees and butterflies as well. In Europe, 9% of bee and butterfly species are threatened. The populations of 37% of bee species and 31% of butterfly species are declining. Where data is available, there are indications that often more than 40% of bee species may be threatened with extinction. In 2016, IPBES published a first major assessment of the pollinator crisis.[7] Wild pollinators have declined in occurrence and diversity (and abundance for certain species) in northwestern Europe and North America. Until 2016, according to this report, there was no general data available for Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, but local declines were recorded in these regions. The abundance, diversity and health of pollinators are threatened by deforestation, intensive agriculture, climate change and pesticides, including neonicotinoid insecticides, which threaten pollinators around the world. The 2016 report warns that, “once a system’s [resilience] threshold is exceeded, pollinator populations can simultaneously collapse” (p. 245). Among the many consequences of this decline or collapse of pollinators, for humanity and for many other species, we can remember three:
(a) Between 94% (in tropical zones) and 78% (in temperate zones) of wild species of flowering plants (approximately 308.000 species) depend, at least in part, on the transfer of pollen by animals for their reproduction. These plants are essential for the functioning of ecosystems.
(b) Of the 107 main types of global agricultural food crops, 91 (fruits, seeds and oilseeds) depend to some extent on animal pollination for their productivity and/or quality.
(c) Animal pollination is directly responsible for 5% to 8% of global agricultural production by volume. These percentages, which will be lost without pollinators, include products containing fundamental micronutrients in the human diet, such as vitamin A, iron and folic acid, essential, for example, for the formation of the fetus' nervous system.
Global agribusiness in the dock
The agricultural model imposed by globalized capitalism is mainly responsible for the physical elimination (via fires and deforestation) of terrestrial and aquatic habitats and the poisoning (via pesticides) of wildlife. As Jeff Tollefson states, in an article in the magazine Nature:[8]
“According to the [IPBES] Report, agricultural activities have had the greatest impact on the ecosystems on which people depend for food, clean water and a stable climate. The loss of species and habitats endangers life on Earth as much as climate change, a summary of the report states.”
Quite the opposite of being a “pop” activity, agribusiness is – together with the fossil fuel industry, mining and industrial fishing – the biggest cause, not just of food insecurity which, according to the FAO, is now resuming its upward trend. ,[9] but from the increasingly dangerous decline in biodiversity. Brazilian farmers who pollute the soil, atmosphere, water and food – after deforestation, setting forests on fire and killing those who resist them – they are a cog in the network’s gear of megacorporations that control the speculative production and trading system of soft commodities, from seeds to final consumption, including financing, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and transport, which tears and fragments what remains of the forest cover. Mainly due to financial interests (the vested interests cited above by IPBES) of this great scorched earth coalition, the planet is losing animals and plants at an “unprecedented” speed, as IPBES further states. And when we talk about unprecedented speed, this means that the Sixth Great Extinction of species, currently underway, is evolving at a speed as or more fulminant than the previous five great extinctions, the fifth of which occurred around 65 million years ago. .[10]
In a statement to delegations gathered at Rio+20 in 2012, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, formerGeneral Director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), reiterated for the umpteenth time the warning that the ongoing Sixth Extinction may, at the limit, imply the extinction of Homo sapiens:
“Sustainability is a matter of life and death for humanity. A sustainable future cannot be achieved without conserving biological diversity – animal species, their habitats and their genes – not only for nature itself, but also for the 7 billion human beings who depend on it.”
This means that the Sixth Extinction is no longer just a moral issue, but increasingly acquires an existential dimension, which will reveal its full destructive potential for humanity and countless other species in the next few decades (“the next few decades”, as stated by IPBES).
The Brazilian catastrophe
With this data in hand, we can better understand the exceptional importance of the meeting on November 4th, as the six communications that will follow each other in the auditorium of the Convention Center will present the Brazilian results of this report, set out in PBrazilian Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES) platform. Brazil, as we know, is among the countries that are both richest in biodiversity and most at risk of seeing this vital wealth annihilated by agribusiness and mining (including, obviously, oil extraction), the two most devastating activities in the world. world economy. If the consequences are global, evident and much more serious than imagined, in Brazil they reach an extreme degree. The 12th edition of the Living Planet Index 2018 (WWF/ZSL) measured the decline of 16.704 populations of 4.005 species between 1970 and 2014. The results give an idea of the catatonia of societies faced with the concrete prospect of the collapse of the planet's biological wealth: on average , surveyed populations of vertebrate animals had declined by 2014 to less than half their 1970 levels. In freshwater habitats, these populations fell by 83%. But nowhere like Brazil and, in general, Central and South America, is this massacre of vertebrate populations more extreme. In this region of the planet there was a total drop of 89% in the examined populations of vertebrate animals. This means that, on average, where there were 100 individuals of a given vertebrate species in 1970, in 2014 there are only 11 individuals left. In Brazil, we are actually closer to the mass extinction of vertebrate species than in the rest of the world. The figure below shows, comparatively, the extreme gravity of the situation on our continent.
As emphasized by the authors of the Living Planet Report 2018: "of all species of plants, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals that have become extinct since 1500, 75% have become extinct due to overexploitation or agricultural activity or both".
The same fulminating process of extermination occurs with plants with seeds (spermatophytes). According to a work published in Nature As of 2019, about three species of seed plants have been going extinct globally every year since 1900, an extinction rate 500 times the baseline rate.[11] In this context, the Atlantic Forest in the Southeast of the country is among the regions that suffered the most from these extinctions, as shown in the world map below.
Reacting to lethargy: everything still depends on us
Maintaining the current economic model – global, carnivorous, polluting, exclusionary, undemocratic, devastating of nature and emitting greenhouse gases – there is no need to create illusions about our future, as the chances of avoiding a collapse of contemporary societies tend to increase. zero over the next quarter century. But much can still be avoided if we act now to stop the destructive spiral. Robert Watson, director of IPBES, warns: “The time for action was yesterday or the day before yesterday.”[12] This is the central message of science. It needs to be heard by everyone, starting with the university community: faculty, students and staff. We have a meeting scheduled with BPBES on November 4th at Unicamp.
[I] I would like to thank Professors Carlos Alfredo Joly and Cristiana Simão Seixas for the information contained in this article about BPBES.
[II] The IPBES is placed under the auspices of UNESCO, FAO, UNDP and UNEP.
[III]"It provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet's biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits they provide to people, as well as the tools and methods to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets. Our mission is to strengthen knowledge foundations for better policy through science, for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development. To some extent IPBES does for biodiversity what the IPCC does for climate change”. See if <https://www.ipbes.net/about>.
[IV] See Andy Purvis, “A million threatened species? Thirteen questions and answers”: “Across a wide and growing range of taxonomic groups, an average of about 25% of species are threatened with extinction when assessed using the well-established and transparent IUCN Red List criteria. Some groups have a higher proportion, some a lower proportion, but the average has now settled down. The percentage of insects that are threatened may well be lower (which matters, because about 75% of species are insects), but evidence from the best-studied insects (dragonflies globally, and bees, butterflies and some beetles in Europe) suggests it is unlikely to be much below 10%. There is not yet any agreement about exactly how many species there are: around 1.7 million animal and plant species have been described, but most estimates of the true total are well over double this number. In the Assessment, we have used a recent mid-low estimate of 8.1 million animal and plant species, of which an estimated 5.5 million are insects (ie, 75%) and 2.6 million are not. So 10% of the 5.5 million insects is 550,000, and 25% of 2.6 million is 625,000. Because of the inaccuracy in the estimates, there is no point in giving the total any more precisely than 1 million threatened animal and plant species”. <https://www.ipbes.net/news/million-threatened-species-thirteen-questions-answers>.
[V] See Sonia Seneviratne et al., “Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets”. Nature, 529, 28/I/2016: «a regional 2°C threshold was passed in the simulations around year 2000 for TNn in the Arctic, while it is projected to be reached by ca. 2030 for TXx in the Mediterranean, Brazil and the contiguous US, and only by the mid-2040s for the global mean temperature, under the business-as-usual (RCP8.5) emissions scenario”; Carlos A. Nobre, José A. Marengo, Wagner R. Soares, Eduardo Assad, Roberto Schaeffer, Fabio R. Scarano, Sandra S. Hacon, Risks of Climate Change in Brazil and Limits to Adaptation, March 2016 (based on IPCC AR5 – RCP8,5); C. Nobre, JA Marengo, WR Soares (eds.), Climate Change Risk in Brazil, Springer, 2019.
[YOU] Cf. Kenneth V. Rosenberg et al., « Decline of the North American Avifauna ». Science, 4/X/2019.
[VII] See IPBES, The assessment report on pollinators, pollination and food production. Simon G. Potts, Vera L. Imperatriz-Fonseca & Hien T. Ngo, (editors), Bonn, 2016, 552 pages.
[VIII] Cf. J. Tollefson, “Humans are driving one million species to extinction”. Nature, 6/V/2019: According to the report, agricultural activities have had the largest impact on ecosystems that people depend on for food, clean water and a stable climate. The loss of species and habitats poses as much a danger to life on Earth as climate change does, says a summary of the work”.
[IX] See FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017. Building resilience for peace and food security. Rome, FAO, 2017. Here are two key messages from this report: (1) “After a prolonged decline, global hunger is on the rise again. It is estimated that the number of undernourished people increased to 815 million in 2016, from 777 million in 2015”; (2) “Almost a third (33%) of women of reproductive age suffer from anemia, which also puts the nutrition and health of many children at risk.”
[X]The 5 extinctions previas larger (extinction of at least 65% of existing species) are: (1) end of the Ordovician (440 million years ago); (2) late DevOnian (365 million years ago); (3) late Permian and Paleozoic (251 million years ago); (4) end of the Triassic (210 million years ago) and (5) end of the Cretaceous (65 million years ago).
[XIV]See Heidi Ledford, “World's largest plant survey reveals alarming extinction rate”. Nature, 10/VI/2019.
[XII] Cf. Jonathan Watts, “Destruction of nature as dangerous as climate change”. The Guardian, 23/III/2018.
