The Living Planet Report 2020 was released by international non-profit World Wide Fund for Nature on September 10, 2020.
Salient Features
- The population of vertebrate species (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish) declined by around 68 per cent between 1970 and 2016.
- The Living Planet Index (LPI) was used by the report to calculate this decline.
- The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species in terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats.
- The report tracked almost 21,000 populations of more than 4,000 vertebrate species between 1970 and 2016.
- Wildlife populations in freshwater habitats suffered a decline of 84 per cent, equivalent to four per cent per year, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, the index showed.
- An example in the form of the population of the Chinese sturgeon — a species of fish found in the country’s Yangtze river — was cited by the report. The population of this fish declined by 97 per cent between 1982 and 2015 because of the damming of the river’s waterway.
(Source: Down to Earth and BBC)
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