The Living Planet Report was released by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on October 13, 2022.
Key points of report
- There has been a 69 per cent decline in the wildlife populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, across the globe in the last 50 years
- The highest decline (94 per cent) was in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
- Africa recorded a 66 per cent fall in its wildlife populations from 1970-2018 and the Asia Pacific 55 per cent.
- Freshwater species populations globally reduced by 83 per cent, confirming that the planet is experiencing a “biodiversity and climate crisis”.
- Habitat loss and barriers to migration routes were responsible for about half of the threats to monitored migratory fish species.
- WWF identified six key threats to biodiversity — agriculture, hunting, logging, pollution, invasive species and climate change — to highlight ‘threat hotspots’ for terrestrial vertebrates.
Living Planet Index (LPI)
- The Living Planet Index (LPI), featuring about 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world, showed that vertebrate wildlife populations are plummeting at a particularly staggering rate in tropical regions of the world.
- The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats.
- The LPI was adopted by the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) as an indicator of progress towards its 2011-2020 targets and can play an important role in monitoring progress towards the post-2020 goals and targets negotiated at COP15 this December.
