The Sixth Mass Extinction

Biodiversity loss and with it extinctions of species are the main factors reshaping key processes in Earth's ecosystems which directly impact its related services such as water or food supply (Hooper 2012). In order to introduce just and effective policies it is important to understand the anthropogenic drivers of such phenomenon (Jaureguiberry 2022). Land use and farm land expansion is the main direct cause driving around 30% of biodiversity loss globally (The Royal Society). Overexploitation of natural resources is the second one followed by climate change, pollution and invasive alien species (Jaureguiberry  2022). Such ranking varies whether we're talking about human driven impacts on land or ocean ecosystems (Jaureguiberry  2022).

The Sixth Mass Extinction, also called Holocene Extinction, is characterized by mostly human induced factors oppositely to the older mass extinction which were driven by natural causes (Ceballos 2015). Because of anthropogenic impact as well as globalization of the world, this extinction presents an increasingly higher rate than background rate (Ceballos 2015).

With the adoption of fossil fuels, humanity has pushed "the consumption of nature’s goods and services much farther beyond long-term carrying capacity (or more precisely, the planet’s biocapacity), making the readjustment from overshoot that is inevitable far more catastrophic if not managed carefully" (Nyström et al., 2019). 

Along with this, population size and overconsumption represent another important anthropogenic biodiversity threat (Bradshaw 2021). This phenomenon leads to an increasingly imperfect distribution of resources, thus reduced access to food supply, pollution, due as well to land use, higher chances of pandemics, as well as societal issues, such as probability of military conflicts and deterioration of political infrastructures (Bradshaw 2021).


References:

Hooper, David U., et al., (2012), A global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change, Nature, (486) 7401

Jaureguiberry, Pedro (2022), The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss, Science advances , 8 (45)

The Royal Society, How do humans affect biodiversity?, Available at: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/biodiversity/human-impact-on-biodiversity/#:~:text=The%20main%20direct%20cause%20of,timber%20which%20drives%20around%2020%25

Ceballos, G., et al., (2015), Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction, Science Advances 1(5)  

Nyström, M., Jouffray, JB., Norström, A.V. et al. (2019), Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem, Nature 575

Bradshaw, C.J., et al. (2021), Underestimating the challenges of avoiding a ghastly future, Frontiers in Conservation Science 1   


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