The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has published the “Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control’’.
- IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body established to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services, working in a similar way to the IPCC, which is the UN’s climate science body.
Key findings
- There are 37,000 alien species, including plants and animals have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world.
- It also includes more than 3,500 invasive alien species and that invasive alien species have played a key role in 60% of global plant and animal extinctions recorded.
- Invasive alien species are one of the five major direct drivers of biodiversity loss globally, alongside land and sea use change, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, and pollution.
- Not all alien species establish and spread with negative impacts on biodiversity, local ecosystems and species, but a significant proportion do – then becoming known as invasive alien species.
- About 6% of alien plants; 22% of alien invertebrates; 14% of alien vertebrates; and 11% of alien microbes are known to be invasive, posing major risks to nature and to people.
- Invasive alien species have been a major factor in 60% and the only driver in 16% of global animal and plant extinctions that we have recorded, and at least 218 invasive alien species have been responsible for more than 1,200 local extinctions.
- The water hyacinth is the world’s most widespread invasive alien species on land. Lantana, a flowering shrub, and the black rat are the second and third most widespread globally.
- The global economic cost of invasive alien species exceeded $423 billion annually.
- Invasive alien species like Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegyptii spread diseases such as malaria, Zika and West Nile Fever, while others also have an impact on livelihood such as the water hyacinth in Lake Victoria in East Africa led to the depletion of tilapia, impacting local fisheries.
- The reduction of food supply is the most common impact of alien invasive species.
- The European shore crab impacting commercial shellfish beds in New England or the Caribbean false mussel damaging locally important fishery resources in Kerala, by wiping out native clams and oysters.
