All around, on the land and in the ocean, nature’s alarm bells are ringing. Wildfires rage in California as hotter, drier conditions make such events more frequent and more severe. One of the worst Atlantic hurricane seasons on record threatens coastal communities. And a coronavirus that jumped from animals to people late last year continues to drive a global pandemic that is responsible for nearly 1 million deaths so far and a global recession. All this seems like a new normal in what scientists refer to as the Anthropocene, the current geologic period dominated by human influence on the planet.
Now we can add another data point to the growing chronicle of humanity’s broken relationship with nature. According to the newly released 2020 Living Planet Report, produced by the WWF, where one of us is CEO, population sizes of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians declined globally by an average of 68 percent between 1970 and 2016. Such loss of nature is driven by unsustainable forms of food and energy production and consumption—the same factors that have fanned climate change and provoked public health crises, such as COVID-19.
