World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)’s Living Planet Report 2024, there has been a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations in just 50 years (1970-2020). The highest decline was reported in freshwater ecosystems (85%), followed by terrestrial (69%) and marine (56%).
World Wildlife Fund for Nature
- It is the world’s leading conservation organization and works in more than 100 countries.
- It is an international non-governmental organization,established in 1961 and is headquartered at Gland, Switzerland.
- Its mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth.
- WWF collaborates at every level with people around the world to develop and deliver innovative solutions that protect communities, wildlife, and the places in which they live.
- World Wide Fund for Nature-India, commonly referred to as WWF-India, was established as a charitable trust in 1969.
- It operates through an autonomous structure, with its Secretariat located in New Delhi, along with multiple state, divisional, and project offices distributed across India.
Living Planet Report and its Key Findings
- The WWF utilises the Living Planet Index (LPI) to track average trends in wildlife populations. It monitors broader changes in species population sizes over time.
- The Living Planet Index, released by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), monitors nearly 35,000 vertebrate populations across 5,495 species from 1970 to 2020.
- It acts as an early warning system for extinction risks and also helps evaluate the overall health and efficiency of ecosystems.
Key Findings
- Significant Population Declines: The steepest declines in monitored wildlife populations are recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean (95%), Africa (76%) and Asia–Pacific (60%) and in freshwater ecosystems (85%).
- Primary Threats to Wildlife: Habitat loss and degradation, is the most reported threat to wildlife populations around the world, followed by overexploitation, invasive species and disease.
- Indicators of Ecosystem Health: Declines in wildlife populations can act as an early warning indicator of increasing extinction risk and loss of healthy ecosystems. Damaged ecosystems become more vulnerable to tipping points which are pushed beyond a critical threshold toward potentially irreversible change. For example, a study in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest indicates that the loss of large fruit-eating animals has reduced seed dispersal for large-seeded trees, which affects carbon storage.The WWF warns that this phenomenon could lead to carbon storage losses of 2-12% across forests in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, diminishing their ability to store carbon amid climate change.
- Vulnerability of Damaged Ecosystems: There are global agreements and solutions to set nature on the path to recovery by 2030, but so far there has been limited progress, and urgency is lacking. More than half of the UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 are unlikely to meet their targets, with 30% already missed or worse than their 2015 baseline.
- Economic Impacts: Globally, over half of GDP (55%) is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. The report estimates that by 2050, the world would only need 0.84 of an Earth to sustain food production if India’s diet model were adopted worldwide.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
- It is an international non-governmental organization
- It was founded in the year 1961
- Headquarters – Gland (Switzerland)
- Its objective is to protect endangered species of wildlife and preserve natural habitats
Reports published by WWF
- Living Planet Report
- Living Planet Index
- Ecological Footprint Calculation