A landmark report by UN agency, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), has revealed that a million species are at risk of extinction, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and only three percent of the world’s oceans are free from human pressure. The report, which is the most thorough state-of-the-planet study to date, makes clear that our current economic system is harmful to nature and capitalism ignores the many ways that natural systems support the generation of food and wealth. In response, the British government has commissioned a report by Sir Partha Dasgupta, a professor at University of Cambridge, on the economic case for biodiversity. The report by Dasgupta will chronicle the environmental costs of neglect and destruction, and the economic benefits of biodiversity protection. Cristiana Pașca-Palmer, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said the global response showed the nature crisis is higher than ever before on the political agenda. She hoped governments will now commit to ambitious measures ahead of next year’s UN biodiversity summit in Beijing, which will set global targets for the following decades.

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The Guardian