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Home , Living Planet Index, Red List Index, The Living Planet

The and : Tracking the State of Global and Pressures on the Biosphere

Jonathan Loh WWF International Honorary Research Associate, , Zoological Society of London

Abstract

WWF’s Living Planet Report has been published biennially since 1998. It was developed as an attempt to quantify and communicate the gravity of the crisis faced by the ’s biodiversity and the challenge for humanity to live within the capacity of the biosphere. Two indicators have been used to measure the state of and pressure on the earth’s . The Living Planet Index (LPI) tracks the state of by aggregating trends in thousands of populations of living in the world’s terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, starting from a baseline set to 1.0 in 1970. The LPI database has now been expanded to the extent that it is possible to produce sub- global LPIs on particular biomes, taxonomic groups, regions or countries. The Ecological Footprint measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere through the consumption of natural renewable resources and the burning of fuels. It can be used to compare countries, regions, or humanity as whole against the biological capacity of the earth. These two indicators have been adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to measure progress towards achieving its target of reducing the rate of by 2010.

Living Planet Report

The indicators discussed in this paper were developed for the WWF Living Planet Report (see http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/index.cfm) over the last decade. The LPR began ten years ago as part of a campaign leading up to the new millennium. Its aim was to attempt to quantify, monitor and communicate the declining state of the world’s biodiversity and the growing human pressures on the biosphere from the consumption of natural resources. The first LPR was published in 1998 and has since been updated biennially. The measure of the state of biodiversity is called the Living Planet Index and was developed by the author and colleagues based at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre specifically for the Living Planet Report. The indicator of human pressure on the biosphere is called the Ecological Footprint, and was developed originally by Mathis Wackernagel and colleagues and has been used and subsequently modified in the Living Planet Report since 2000. The last report was published in 2006 and was a collaborative effort with the Zoological Society of London, WWF’s partner now working on the Living Planet Index, and the Global Footprint Network, based in Oakland, California, which is responsible for producing the Ecological Footprint.

1 The 2010 Biodiversity Target

In 2001, at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 190 of the world's governments adopted a target to “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth”. This target was endorsed the following year at the World Summit on in Johannesburg. Such public commitments mean that, for the first time, the public can hold its leaders accountable for their success or failure in meeting measurable and quantifiable objectives on this critical issue. WWF and other NGOs are monitoring their progress and, wherever possible, contributing to the achievement of this target. Equally, they will not fail to point out where nations are falling short of their stated aims and will continue to call for much-needed action.

Focal Areas Within the context of the CBD, governments agreed to monitor and report on progress under seven focal areas relating to the overall 2010 target. These are: 1. Status and trends of the components of biological diversity 2. Sustainable use 3. Threats to biodiversity 4. integrity and ecosystem goods and services 5. Status of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices 6. Status of access and benefit-sharing 7. Status of resource transfers This paper focuses only on the first two of these focal areas.

2010 Target Indicators For each of the seven focal areas, indicators have been selected. In reality, only a few of the selected indicators are sufficiently well developed or have sufficient data available to enable them to measure progress towards the focal area of the 2010 target. Some indicators, therefore, have been chosen “for immediate testing” and others for “further development”. Because the target explicitly calls for a reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss, the data used to measure progress must go back many years prior to 2010, or preferably decades. Only a few of the selected indicators currently have datasets available that allow changes over decadal timescales to be measured. Under the focal area 1, status and trends of the components of biological diversity, there are good datasets for four of the selected indicators • trends in the extent of selected biomes, ecosystems and – although currently time-series data at the global scale exist only for forests, and possibly coral reefs • trends in of selected species (Living Planet Index) • coverage of protected areas, although this does not in fact measure the status of global biodiversity but one of the responses to its decline, and • changes in status of threatened species ()

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Under focal area 2, sustainable use, global-level time-series data exist only for the ecological footprint.

The Living Planet Index

The Living Planet Index (LPI) is an indicator of the state of the world’s biodiversity; it aggregates trends in thousands of populations of vertebrate species from all around world into a single index, starting at 1.0 in 1970. Separate indices are produced for terrestrial, marine and freshwater species, so the LPI can also be considered to be a measure of trends in ecosystem health for Living Planet Index different biomes

or habitats. 1.4 Although 1.2 represent only a 1.0 fraction of all

known species, it 0.8 is assumed that 0.6 their population LPI trends are typical 0.4 of global 95% CI biodiversity as a 0.2 95% CI whole. 0.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 The LPI is based on trends in about 5,000 populations of nearly 1,500 species. It is calculated as the average of three separate indices that measure trends in populations of 752 terrestrial species, 389 freshwater species and 310 marine species (see Table 1). Between 1970 and 2003 (the most recent year for which sufficient data are available) the LPI fell by about 30%. This is also the case for the terrestrial, marine and freshwater LPIs, which confirms that the earth is losing its biodiversity at a rate unprecedented in human history. Table 1: No.s of species in the LPI

Species Terrestrial Freshwater Marine Total 0 111 129 240 2 75 0 77 Reptiles 14 25 7 46 531 164 121 816 205 14 53 272 Total 752 389 310 1451

Temperate and Tropical Terrestrial LPIs The decline in terrestrial species populations by about 30% between 1970 and 2003 masks a significant difference between species in temperate regions and species in the . While temperate species populations remained reasonably stable on average, tropical species declined by more than 50%. This rapid fall in tropical species populations

3 reflects the rapid conversion of natural to cropland or pasture over the last fifty years, driven ultimately by the growth in human population and increasing world demand for food, fibre and timber. The conversion of natural habitat to farmland in temperate regions, on the other hand, largely occurred long before 1970, and the consequent decline in species populations is not therefore reflected in the temperate index. The LPI does not say that the current state of biodiversity is worse in the tropics than temperate regions, but that the trends over the last three decades have been worse.

Temperate and Tropical Terrestrial Indices

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6 Temperate Index Low CI 0.4 High CI Tropical Index Low CI High CI 0.2

0.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 National LPIs LPI Canada Terrestrial, 1970-2003 With around 5,000 species 1.4 populations in the 1.2 LPI database it is possible to 1 analyze the data to look at trends in 0.8 particular regions, biomes or 0.6 taxonomic group. 0.4 Birds For some Mammals countries, it is 0.2 LPI Canada Terrestrial possible to 0 analyze trends in 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 biodiversity at the national level, and this has been done for Canada and Uganda. Although they are very different countries in size, climate and economy, the same methodology can be used to produce a national LPI. The results illustrate the differences between the temperate and tropical regions very well. The Canadian LPI shows no overall trend, although Canadian birds have fared much better than Canadian mammals, while the Ugandan LPI shows a dramatic decline, also worse for mammals than birds. While it is true to say that these aggregated indices hide some species population trends that run counter to the national average, for example declines in Canadian prairie grassland birds, these national LPIs broadly reflect trends in biodiversity in temperate and tropical countries respectively. The Ugandan LPI would suggest that Uganda will meet the 2010 target as there has been a

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LPI Uganda significant reduction in 1.4 the rate of

All Species N = 35 1.2 biodiversity Birds N = 9 loss since 1 Mammals N = 26 1995. This is probably a 0.8 result of political 0.6 stability and a

0.4 consequent reduction in 0.2 poaching of large game 0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 animals.

Red List Index

The Red List Index (RLI) is not used in the Living Planet Report, but worth mentioning as a well-developed indicator with some global-level time-series data. The RLI is a relatively new indicator which tracks the changes in threat status, as recorded in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, across all species in a given taxonomic group. The IUCN Red List places species into threat categories according to an assessment of risk, ranked from least concern through vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered to . The only taxonomic groups which have been comprehensively assessed are birds mammals and amphibians. So far the Red List Index has been applied only to birds and amphibians, but will soon be completed for mammals too. In order to give a better indication of trends in biodiversity as a whole, the RLI is being applied to large, random samples of species from a number of less well-known taxonomic groups, including and , but these will not be ready until all these groups have been assessed for threat status at least twice. The RLI for birds, which has the most comp rehensive data for any taxonomic group, shows that over 2% of all birds species have becom e more threatened (moved up to a higher extinction risk category) since 1988 whereas less than 0.5% have become less threatened (moved down a category).

Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint measures the area of biologically productive land and sea required to sustain the resource consumption of a given population. The world’s ecological footprint tripled between1961 and 2003 to over 14 billion hectares, while approximately doubled. It is composed of the cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds needed to produce food, fibre and materials; the urban land occupied by buildings and infrastructure; and the biologically productive land that would be required to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels. The carbon footprint was the fastest growing component from 1961 to 2003 and now comprises about half of humanity’s total footprint. Our demands on the biosphere can be compared with supply, or the earth’s biologically productivity. About a quarter of the earth’s surface, or just over eleven billion hectares, is

5 biologically productive. Humanity’s ecological footprint is therefore about 25 percent larger than the earth’s biological capacity, or biocapacity, a situation described as overshoot. Overshoot is, by definition, unsustainable, and will result in the deterioration of resource stocks and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the and ocean. Another way to look at overshoot is on a per capita basis. Eleven billion hectares of biologically productive space divided between more than six billion people equates to less than two hectares per person. A regional breakdown of the global ecological footprint shows that the North American footprint is about 9.4 hectares per person, the EU’s is about 4.8 hectares per person, while the Asia-Pacific and African per capita footprints are 1.3 and 1.1 hectares respectively. In the figure below the height of each rectangle represents a region’s per capita footprint, and the width represents its population. The area of the rectangle is proportional to a region’s total ecological footprint. In order to achieve a sustainable future, in which humanity’s resource consumption remains within the biological capacity of the earth, the world average per capita footprint must fall below 1.8 hectares per person. However, this ignores future , and ignores the needs of other species which also depend on the earth’s productivity. Ultimately we may have to live on less than one hectare of biocapacity per person. The challenge for the coming century will be to reduce humanity’s global footprint and, at the same time, enhance the biological productivity of the earth in order to sustain 10 million of our own species, as well as ensure the survival of the myriad others with which we share this planet.

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