6th Mass Extinction Underway

In Context 

• The Earth is losing species at unprecedented rates, with thousands likely to go extinct within decades.
  • This marks the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch, a self-aggrandising nomenclature that highlights our disproportionate and irreversible impacts on the surroundings.

Major Studies in this context 

• IUCN study:
  • In December 2021, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on dragonflies and damselflies revealed that “16% out of 6,016 species are at risk of extinction”
  • In South and Southeast Asia, which includes India, the situation is even worse because a quarter of all species are under threat of extinction. 
    • IUCN attributes this extinction of small creatures to the fast-declining freshwater breeding grounds.
    •  It means, the decline is due to rapid urbanisation and clearing of wetlands and rainforests to make way for cash crops. 
    • Marshes and other wetlands may seem unproductive and inhospitable to humans, but in fact they provide us with essential services. 
      • They store carbon, give us clean water and food, protect us from floods, as well as offer habitats for one in ten of the world’s known species.
• Threat faced by dragonflies 
  • The existential threat faced by dragonflies is a cause of concern for all of the planet’s 8.1 million species. 
    • the number of species at risk of extinction on the Red List has exceeded 40,000 for the first time.

•  The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services”
  • The first such by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released in 2019, shows that the current rate and scale of extinction is unprecedented and is being caused majorly by humans. 

• The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) “Living Planet Report 2020” 
  • It says the Asia Pacific region lost 45 percent of its vertebrate population in four-and-half decades, while the average global loss is 68 per cent. 
  • The biennial report, prepared jointly by WWF and Zoological Society of London, is based on the global dataset analysed between 1970 and 2016. 
    • The report has tracked almost 21,000 populations of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles globally to reach its conclusions.

• The “Living Planet Report 2020”:
  •  It  points out five major reasons behind the biodiversity loss across the planet: changes in land and sea use (habitat loss and degradation), overexploitation of species, invasive species and disease, pollution and climate change. 
  • In the Asia Pacific region, including India that is experiencing loss of species higher than the global average, habitat degradation is the biggest trigger, followed by species overexploitation and invasive species and disease. The role of pollution and climate change was proportionately higher at 16 per cent.

Factors affecting the extinction

• Human activity:
  • Unlike previous extinction events caused by natural phenomena, the sixth mass extinction is driven by human activity, primarily (though not limited to) the unsustainable use of land, water and energy use, and climate change. 
  • According to the Living Planet Report, 30% of all land that sustains biodiversity has been converted for food production. 
  • Agriculture is also responsible for 80% of global deforestation and accounts for 70% of the planet’s freshwater use, devastating the species that inhabit those places by significantly altering their habitats. 
    • It’s evident that where and how food is produced is one of the biggest human-caused threats to species extinction and our ecosystems.
•  Greenhouse gas emissions:
  • Unsustainable food production and consumption are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that are causing atmospheric temperatures to rise, wreaking havoc across the globe. 
  • The climate crisis is causing everything from severe droughts to more frequent and intense storms. 

• Major changes in Earth’s carbon cycle: 
  • Such as large igneous province eruptions, huge volcanoes that flooded hundreds of thousands of square miles with lava. These eruptions ejected massive amounts of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, enabling runaway global warming and related effects such as ocean acidification and anoxia, a loss of dissolved oxygen in the water.

Impact of mass extinction

• Species do not exist in isolation; they are interconnected. 
  • A single species interacts with many other species in specific ways that produce benefits to people, like clean air, clean water, and healthy soils for efficient food production. 
  • When one species goes extinct in an ecosystem or its population numbers decline so significantly that it cannot sustain its important function, other species are affected, impacting the way the ecosystem functions and the benefits it provides. 
  • Serious declines in populations of species are an indicator that the ecosystem is breaking down, warning of a larger systems failure.
• Currently, the species extinction rate is estimated between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than natural extinction rates—the rate of species extinctions that would occur if we humans were not around. 
  • While extinctions are a normal and expected part of the evolutionary process, the current rates of species population decline and species extinction are high enough to threaten important ecological functions that support human life on Earth, such as a stable climate, predictable regional precipitation patterns, and productive farmland and fisheries.
• It also exacerbates the challenges associated with food production that stress species, while creating conditions that make their habitats inhospitable.
•  Increased droughts and floods have made it more difficult to maintain crops and produce sufficient food in some regions. 
  • The intertwined relationships among the food system, climate change, and biodiversity loss are placing immense pressure on our planet.

Various steps to be taken to prevent the mass extinctions

• Humans can be the driving force: The world is awash with scientists, conservationists and environmentalists working in the laboratory, in conservation areas and in political battlegrounds to protect endangered species.
• Legislation: From tackling global pollution emissions in the 2016 Paris Agreement to the U.K.’s Global Resource Initiative that combats deforestation, legislation will always be at the forefront of the fight against mass extinction.
  • We can ramp up our commitments to cutting carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
• Regulating wildlife markets: In the wake of the current pandemic, wildlife markets have been thrust into the spotlight as not only being environmentally irresponsible, but potentially dangerous to human health through zoonotic diseases that jump from animals to humans such as COVID-19. These markets, trading live exotic animals or products derived from them, are found throughout the world.
• Monitoring species population: One of the best ways to help prevent species from becoming extinct is to monitor their populations and identify any problems before it’s too late to help. Currently camera traps and surveys conducted on foot or from aircraft are the main method of data collection.
• Saved by cloning: Another potential solution to combat extinction could be to clone species. In 2021, scientists revealed they had successfully cloned a black-footed ferret from an animal that had died more than 30 years ago.
  • Native to North America, these small mammals were thought to be extinct until a small colony was found in the early 1980s, which were entered into a breeding program and reintroduced around the United States. 

• 30X30. Our leaders can support the America the Beautiful initiative to conserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030.
• UN Biodiversity Summit. US leadership can play a critical role beside 195 other countries and agree to new ambitious global goals on biodiversity and how they can be financed and implemented.
• Grassroots action. While the federal government can set high-level policies to conserve nature, businesses, communities, and individuals have a powerful role to play in shifting corporate behaviour with their consumer choices and demanding accountability from political leaders.

Source:DTE