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Destruction of nature is as big a threat to humanity as climate change.

By Michael Le Page

Farming and housing occupies large amounts of land globally

Steve Proehl/Getty

We are destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, threatening the survival of a million species – and our own future, too. But it’s not too late to save them and us, says a major new report.

“The evidence is incontestable. Our destruction of biodiversity and ecosystem services has reached levels that threaten our well-being at least as much as human-induced climate change.”

With these words chair Robert Watson launched a meeting in Paris to agree the final text of a major UN report on the state of nature around the world – the biggest and most thorough assessment to date, put together by 150 scientists from 50 countries.

The report, released today, is mostly grim reading. We humans have already significantly altered three-quarters of all land and two-thirds of the oceans. More than a third of land and three-quarters of freshwater resources are devoted to crops or livestock.

Around 700 vertebrates have gone extinct in the past few centuries. Forty per cent of amphibians and a third of coral species, sharks and marine mammals look set to follow.

Less room for wildlife

Preventing this is vital to save ourselves, the report says. “Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing,” says one of the the report’s authors, Josef Settele. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

The main reason is simple. Our expanding farms and cities are leaving less room for wildlife. The other major causes are the direct exploitation of wildlife such as hunting, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species. Climate change is set to become ever more destructive.

Read more: Is life on Earth really at risk? The truth about the extinction crisis

But we can still turn things around, the report says. “Nature can be conserved, restored and used sustainably while simultaneously meeting other global societal goals through urgent and concerted efforts fostering transformative change,” it states.

It also says that where land is owned or managed by indigenous peoples and local communities, there has been less destruction and sometimes none at all.

The aim of the report, by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is to provide an authoritative scientific basis for international action . The hope is that it will lead to the same pressure for action as the latest scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on limiting warming to 1.5°C.

“Good knowledge is absolutely essential for good governance,” says Watson, who chaired the IPCC from 1997 to 2002 . “I’m optimistic that this will make a difference.”

Bioenergy threat

But the challenge is immense. All countries except the US have ratified the 1992 UN Convention of Biodiversity and are supposed to be conserving biodiversity and promoting its sustainable use.

Despite this, more than 80 per cent of the agreed international targets for 2020 will not be met, says the report. In fact, as of 2016, half the signatory countries hadn’t yet drawn up plans on how to meet the targets .

The problem isn’t just our focus on economic growth regardless of the impact on the natural world. Current plans for reducing carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero to limit climate change rely heavily on bioenergy, which requires a lot of land. This will accelerate species loss as well as threatening food and water security, says the report.

Read more: Rewilding: Can we really restore ravaged nature to a pristine state?

In fact, the bioenergy push is already causing harm. For instance, rainforests are being cut down in Indonesia and Malaysia to grow palm oil to make biodiesel for cars in Europe .

Transforming our civilisation to make it more sustainable will require more connected thinking, the report says. “There’s a very fragmented approach,” says Watson. “We’ve got to think about all these things in a much more holistic way.”

For instance, there are ways of tackling climate change that will help biodiversity too, such as persuading people to eat less meat and planting more trees. But the devil is in the detail – artificial plantations would benefit wildlife far less than restoring natural forests.

Some of the solutions set out in the report may not be welcome to all. In particular, it effectively calls for wealthy people to consume less, suggesting that changing the habits of the affluent may be central to sustainable development worldwide.

Read more: Half the planet should be set aside for wildlife – to save ourselves

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Humans are causing life on Earth to vanish

Ecosystems, the fabric of life on which we all depend, are declining rapidly because of human actions. But there is still time to save them.

Human pressure on nature has soared since the 1970s. We have been using more and more natural resources, and this has come at a cost.

If we lose large portions of the natural world, human quality of life will be severely reduced and the lives of future generations will be threatened unless effective action is taken.

Over the last 50 years, nature's capacity to support us has plummeted. Air and water quality are reducing, soils are depleting, crops are short of pollinators, and coasts are less protected from storms.

Prof Andy Purvis, a Museum research leader,  has spent three years studying human interactions with nature. Alongside experts from more than 50 different countries, he has produced the most comprehensive review ever of the worldwide state of nature, with a summary published in the journal Science .

It was coordinated by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent body that provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity.

The latest report paints a shocking picture. We are changing nature on a global scale and the impacts of our actions are being distributed unequally.

'It was terrifying to see how close we are to playing Russian roulette with the only world we have,' says Andy. 'But it's also been inspiring, because there is a way out of this.

'What has given hope to the many scientists who worked on this report has been the way the public are fully aware of the dangers and want action. We just need to make sure the politicians remember that too.'

A diagram from the report showing the risk of extinction in different groups of species, assuming that species with limited or no data are equally threatened as other species in their taxonomic group.

Nature feeling the squeeze

Since the 1970s, Earth's population has doubled, and consumption has increased by 45% per capita.

The world is increasingly managed in a way that maximises the flow of material from nature, to meet rising human demands for resources like food, energy and timber.

As a result, humans have directly altered at least 70% of Earth's land, mainly for growing plants and keeping animals. These activities necessitate deforestation, the degradation of land, loss of biodiversity and pollution, and they have the biggest impacts on land and freshwater ecosystems.

About 77% of rivers longer than 1,000 kilometres no longer flow freely from source to sea, despite supporting millions of people.

The main cause of ocean change is overfishing, but 66% of the ocean's surface has also been affected by other processes like runoff from agriculture and plastic pollution.

Live coral cover on reefs has nearly halved in the past 150 years and is predicted to disappear completely within the next 80 years. Coral reefs are home to some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet.  

The number of alien species - species found outside their natural range - has risen, as humans move organisms around the world, which disrupts and often diminishes the richness of local biodiversity. This, combined with human-driven changes in habitat, also threatens many endemic species.

In addition, fewer varieties of plants and animals are being preserved due to standardisations in farming practices, market preferences, large-scale trade and loss of local and indigenous knowledge.

Nature also benefits humans in non-material ways. We learn from it and are inspired by it. It gives us physical and psychological experiences and supports our identity and sense of place. But its capacity to provide these services has also diminished.

What's causing it?

The loss of ecosystems is caused mainly by changes in land and sea use, exploitation, climate change, pollution and the introduction of invasive species.

Some things have a direct impact on nature, like the dumping of waste into the ocean.

Other causes are indirect. Those include demographic, economic, political and institutional arrangements underpinned by social values, and they interact with one another.

For example, vast areas of land managed by Indigenous Peoples are experiencing a decline in ecosystems at a slower rate than everywhere else. But the rights of Indigenous Peoples are being threatened, which could result in faster deterioration of these areas. This would have a detrimental impact on wider ecosystems and societies.

Coral reefs are bleaching at an unprecedented rate

Trading overseas has increased by 900% since the start of the post-industrial era and the extraction of living materials from nature has risen by 200%.

The growing physical distance between supply and demand means people don't see the destruction caused by their consumption.

'Before the Industrial Revolution, people had to look after the environment around them because that's where they got their products from,' says Andy. 'If they didn't look after it, they would face the consequences.

'Now with globalisation, we have massive environmental impacts a long way from where we live. But we are insulated from these impacts, so they are abstract to us.'

Overseas trading also creates and increases inequality. The pressure for material goods comes mostly from middle and high-income countries and is often met by low to middle-income countries.

For example, Japan, US and Europe alone consumed 64% of the world's imports of fish products. High income countries have their own fisheries but most of these have collapsed. Fishing now takes place in previously unexploited or underexploited fisheries, most of which belong to low-income countries.

'With the massive increase in trade, there is no longer that imperative to make sustainable choices,' says Andy. 'We can overexploit natural resources somewhere else in the world and the magnitudes of our choices are invisible to us.'

What does the future hold?

The report analysed in detail how the world will look under three very different scenarios.

• Global sustainability: the whole world shifts towards sustainability by respecting environmental boundaries and making sure economic development includes everyone. Wealth is distributed evenly, resources and energy are used less, and emphasis is on economic growth and human wellbeing.
• Regional competition: there is a rise in nationalism with the focus mostly on domestic issues. There is less investment in education, particularly in the developing world. High-income countries will continue exporting the damage, resulting in some strong and lasting environmental destruction for future generations to deal with.
• Economic optimism: the world puts faith in new and innovative technologies that are still to be invented, which help us cope with environmental problems. Emissions will continue, but with the idea that technology will mitigate them. There will be stronger investment in health and education, and global markets are reasonably integrated with shared goals.

Combating the loss of ecosystems is going to be complex and will require a nexus approach. This means thinking about how different components of the problem such as nature, politics and socioeconomics all interact with one another.

An example of a nexus approach would be to reduce biodiversity loss by changing how we farm, while at the same time making sure people have enough food, their livelihoods are not undermined, and social conflicts are not aggravated.

The way to avoid some of these issues may be to focus on regenerating and restoring high-carbon ecosystems such as forests and wetlands. Similarly the need for food could be met by changing dietary choices and reducing waste.

Switching to clean energy is an important step which would allow other changes to happen more easily. Obtaining coal and gas involves destroying vast amounts of land and seascapes as well as polluting the environment beyond extraction.

But in order to achieve this fully, the world needs to revaluate current political structures and societal norms, which tend not to value nature. One way of doing that is by improving existing environmental policies and regulations, as well as removing and reforming harmful policies.

'I hope people can see that this is not a drill,' says Andy. 'This really is an emergency and I hope they act on it.'

The Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have decided that the IPBES Global Assessment Report will form the scientific and technical evidence base for the intergovernmental negotiations in 2020, to agree on a global biodiversity framework for the next decade and to replace the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that expire next year.

IPBES Chair Anna Maria Hernandez concludes, 'This new article makes it even more clear that we need profound, system-wide change and that this requires urgent action from policymakers, business, communities and every individual.

'Working in tandem with other knowledge systems, such as Indigenous and local knowledge, science has spoken, and nobody can say that they did not know. There is literally no time to waste.'

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The Global Impacts of Habitat Destruction

Habitat destruction is one of the biggest threats facing plants and animal species throughout the world. The loss of habitat has far-reaching impacts on the planet’s ability to sustain life, but even with the challenges, there is hope for the future.

Habitat destruction, defined as the elimination or alteration of the conditions necessary for animals and plants to survive, not only impacts individual species but the health of the global ecosystem.

Habitat loss is primarily, though not always, human-caused. The clearing of land for farming, grazing, mining, drilling, and urbanization impact the 80 percent of global species who call the forest home. Approximately 15 billion trees are cut down each year. According to a study about tree density published in Nature , the number of trees worldwide has decreased by 46 percent since the start of civilization. In addition to the loss of habitat, deforestation reduces the ability of forests to provide the critical benefit of absorbing carbon, which helps to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The situation is even worse in waterways, coastal areas, and the ocean. Coastal estuaries and marshes provide breeding grounds for the majority of marine species. As they, along with inland wetlands, are dredged and filled, species are less able to birth and support their young. Pollution and effluents from the land travel easily through streams and rivers to the ocean, where they impact the health of fish, birds, and marine plants. Deforestation far from shore can cause erosion that enters the water and deposits silt into the shallow marine waters, blocking the sunlight that coral reefs need to survive.

Despite the habitat loss that has occurred globally to date, there is still hope. Studies reveal that by protecting 50 percent of the land and ocean around the world, plant and animal species could thrive. Today, only 15 percent of the land and 7 percent of the ocean is protected, leaving us with a challenging yet attainable goal.

The Campaign for Nature calls upon world leaders to take action in helping to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s land and ocean by 2030, on the way to 50 percent of the planet in a natural state by 2050. This commitment represents our best opportunity to preserve the ecosystems necessary for our survival.

The National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit organization that uses the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world. Since 1888, National Geographic has pushed the boundaries of exploration, investing in bold people and transformative ideas, providing more than 15,000 grants for work across all seven continents, reaching 3 million students each year through education offerings, and engaging audiences around the globe through signature experiences, stories and content. To learn more, visit www.nationalgeographic.org or follow us on Instagram , LinkedIn, and Facebook .

As biodiversity degrades, nature’s solutions are lost for ever

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Humanity faces unprecedented engineering challenges if it is to survive. Solutions to these challenges are waiting to be discovered in plants, animals, and microbes, but these could be lost forever, if we do not preserve the rich diversity of life on Earth.

The UN biodiversity conference, COP15 , is due to wrap up on 19 December. This weekend, we are looking at some of the ways that humanity is reliant on biodiversity for a healthy and thriving global ecosystem.

When a species goes extinct, it takes with it all of the physical, chemical, biological, and behavioural attributes that have been selected for that species, after having been tested and re-tested in countless evolutionary experiments over many thousands, and perhaps millions, of years of evolution.

These include designs for heating, cooling, and ventilation; for being able to move most effectively and efficiently through water or air; for producing and storing energy; for making the strongest, lightest, most biodegradable and recyclable materials; and for many, many other functions essential for life.

Nature’s value is not limited to human applications, but the loss of nature and biodiversity represents major losses to human potential as well.

Here are some examples of the ways that nature has inspired engineering solutions.

Way of the dragonfly

Inspired by the energy efficiency of dragonfly wings, particularly at low wind speeds, Professor Akira Obata, formerly from Japan’s Nippon Bunri University, designed corrugated blades for micro-wind turbines that turn and generate electricity, at wind speeds as low as 3 kph.

Most wind turbines perform poorly when speeds are less than 10 kph; some will not turn at all. By lowering the minimum wind speed requirements, these micro-wind turbines can harness wind energy in easily accessible locations like rooftops and balconies, and not need expensive towers to capture the higher speed winds found at higher elevations.

By studying and understanding the aerodynamics of dragonfly flight, Obata was able to make inexpensive, lightweight, stable, and efficient micro-wind turbines that can be used in off-grid locations in developing countries.

What is blacker than black?

Some butterflies, birds, and spiders have evolved super black coloration achieved by a variety of complex light-trapping mechanisms that could lead to new energy-efficient designs for solar collection.

The micro and nano-structures of surfaces strongly determine their light absorptive or reflective properties. Understanding not only the composition of the pigments involved but also the fine-structure and the physics of these surfaces, may be useful in designing more energy efficient systems for heating and cooling buildings, and more productive solar energy collectors.

‘Fog basking’

Two species of beetles actively harvest water from fog with a sequence of behaviours called ‘fog basking’. Late at night, in advance of the fog that rolls in nightly in the coastal sections of the Namib desert, the beetles emerge from the sand and climb up the dunes to place themselves in the fog’s path.

Tilting their bodies forward while facing the fog, they harvest moisture on their backs, which are made of hardened forewings called elytra that cover and protect their hind wings, used for flying.

The small water droplets in the fog collect there, coalesce to form larger droplets, which, by the force of gravity, run down the smooth hydrophobic (i.e. water-repelling) surfaces to the beetles’ mouths.

Given WHO estimates that half the world’s population will be living in water-stressed environments by 2025, the specific chemistry and structure of hydrophobic surfaces found in Namib beetles has generated enormous scientific interest for their potential human applications.

Birds and fossil fuels

Gliding and soaring birds are masters of aerodynamic efficiency and their wing-tip feather design inspired engineers to add small up-turned ‘winglets’ that reduce drag caused by vortices at the tips of aircraft wings.

By copying this wing-tip design, commercial airlines have saved 10 billion gallons of fuel, reducing their CO2 emissions by 105 million tonnes per annum.

To sequester this amount of carbon, one would need to plant about 16 million hectares of trees, each year – an area larger than the territory of Norway or Japan.

Extinction is not a foregone conclusion

The wastefulness of extinction is perhaps best highlighted by the near-extinction of the humpback whale.

Over-hunting almost wiped out these gigantic creatures, among the largest to ever have lived on the planet, and the humpback population crashed to just 5,000 in 1966.

Conservation organizations and scientists prompted a huge public and political outcry and humpback whales bounced back to an estimated 80,000 today. The humpback, uniquely, has bumpy ‘tubercles’ on the front of its flippers that enable these giants to manoeuvre with extraordinary agility.

The tubercles give the whales a hydrodynamic advantage - they minimize drag, enhance their ability to stay in motion and, critical when attacking prey, allow them to turn at sharper angles. Among other applications these have inspired engineers to make some of the most efficient industrial fan blades and wind power generators. If the humpbacks had gone extinct, we might have never been able to avail ourselves of the tubercle design.

The extraordinary organisms featured above, along with the sustainable engineering designs they have inspired, present a compelling case for why we must preserve biodiversity.

The organisms that create the support systems make all life on Earth, including human life, possible: millions of species are at risk, but losing even a single species can have enormous negative consequences for humanity.

The story is based on the UN Development Programme ( UNDP ) photo essay, Sustainable Engineering Depends on Biodiversity . The full booklet, “How Sustainable Engineering Solutions Depend on Biodiversity” by Eric Chivian M.D., Gael McGill Ph.D., and Jeannie Park, is available here.

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Why 2020 is the year to reset humanity’s relationship with nature

This year's bushfires in Australia have been unprecedented. Image:  REUTERS/Jason Reed

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Stay up to date:, nature and biodiversity.

• Biodiversity loss is in top-5 global risks in authoritative new survey.
• In 2020, raft of big decisions to be taken on our relationship with nature.
• Business has a big interest in ensuring we stop degrading environment.

The pace of change over the past 50 years has been extraordinary. The global economy has expanded four-fold, over a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, we live significantly longer and childbirth mortality had significantly dropped. However, this 19th and 20th century model of economic growth has come at a significant cost to nature.

Globally, nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history, with up to 1 million species at risk of extinction due to human activity. Unprecedented forest fires - from the Arctic to the Amazon, Africa, Australia - have killed billions of animals, destroyed lives and wiped out huge areas of forest. Since 1970, there has been a 60% average population decline across all vertebrate species. Over the same period, we have lost more than half of the world’s coral reefs and over a third of all wetlands. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise , both intensifying extreme weather events and nature loss and putting efforts to meet the goals of Paris Agreement further off course.

Have you read?

Why the fight against nature loss should be a business priority, greener, healthier, more sustainable: why cities of the future need more biodiversity, our most powerful, high-tech climate solution our forests.

It is then no surprise that the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020 ranked biodiversity loss as one of the top five risks in terms of impact and likelihood over the coming decade. For the first time in planetary history, humans are the driver of climate and environmental change or what is being called by the scientists as the Anthropocene. Earth system scientists and researchers predict that if current rates of nature destruction continue unabated, some biomes (e.g. tundra, grasslands, coral reefs, forests, deserts) may cross irreversible tipping points. For example, nearly 17% of forest cover in the Amazon has been destroyed since 1970. If the rate of forest loss continues, and 20% to 25% of the forest is lost, scientists warn that the region will get pushed into a state of savannah, releasing billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and leading to increased droughts and huge losses in agricultural production.

In the last 100 years, more than 90 percent of crop varieties have disappeared from farmers’ fields, and all of the world’s 17 main fishing grounds are now being fished at or above their sustainable limits.

These trends have reduced diversity in our diets, which is directly linked to diseases or health risk factors, such as diabetes, obesity and malnutrition. One initiative which is bringing a renewed focus on biological diversity is the Tropical Forest Alliance .

This global public-private partnership is working on removing deforestation from four global commodity supply chains – palm oil, beef, soy, and pulp and paper.

The Alliance includes businesses, governments, civil society, indigenous people and communities, and international organizations.

Enquire to become a member or partner of the Forum and help stop deforestation linked to supply chains.

UK economist Partha Dasgupta has acknowledged, “we economists see nature, when we see it at all, as a backdrop from which resources and services can be drawn in isolation”. We couldn’t agree more as challenges of nature loss are both wicked and non-linear. No single business and no single human on this planet can decouple its dependency from nature. The report Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy shows that $44 trillion of economic value generation – over half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services, and therefore exposed to risks from nature loss. Intensive monocropping, industrial-scale fisheries and unsustainable construction have further exposed economies and societal well-being to nature-related risk.

There is an urgent need to reset humanity’s relationship with nature. Over the coming year, a series of decisions are set to be taken that will define the direction of our planet’s future. With an agreement on a new 2030 global biodiversity framework, the definition of national contributions to the Paris climate targets and the opportunity to embrace nature based solutions under the UN Climate Convention, a new treaty on the use of living marine resources in high seas, we have a chance to bring the environmental and sustainable development agendas together and deliver an ambitious and science based New Deal for Nature and People .

As world leaders gather in Davos under the theme of “ Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World ” there is a unique opportunity to adopt a growth model that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. With an increasing number of countries and companies working towards halting and reversing nature loss and securing a zero-net-emissions world by 2050, there is a unique opportunity to use the year 2020 to set in motion systemic changes for the coming decade towards a nature-positive economy. We must identify new mechanisms for financing and collaboration that are public-private and inspire a shared-narrative for halting, restoring and reversing the current trajectory of nature loss and climate change. Businesses create value to support a well-functioning society which in turn exists in delicate balance with the rest of the living beings on the planet. It is imperative that our business and economic structures reflect the necessity of maintaining this balance.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

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Human Impacts on the Environment

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water. These negative impacts can affect human behavior and can prompt mass migrations or battles over clean water.

Help your students understand the impact humans have on the physical environment with these classroom resources.

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Filed under Coronavirus Climate Emergency

12 April 2021

At TTU we highlight cutting edge trends to alert leaders on why they must change how they think. We also share examples of great leadership and insights as an inspiration for others.

Here we publish a powerful alert on the urgent challenges we confront to save the planet that we all take for granted. The details and warnings are sobering. But none of us can afford to ignore them. To save nature we must all urgently change the way we conduct our lives.

This is an edited and shortened version of remarks delivered by Inger Andersen , Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the London School of Economics on 20 January 2021

As we seek to overcome this terrible pandemic, we must do so in the knowledge that it is not something that we can just fix, wash our hands of, and return to normal. Why? Because it is normal that brought us where we are today.

The pandemic has shown that we must rethink our very relationship with nature. It is our destruction of wild species, which is implicated in the emergence of the many diseases that jump from animals to humans, such as COVID-19.

The pandemic is a warning from the planet. Unless we change our ways, much worse lies in store. It’s a warning that we must heed. After years of promise - but not enough action - we must finally hear that warning and get on top of three planetary crises that threaten our collective future.

Existential crises

These are: the climate crisis, the biodiversity and nature crisis, and the pollution and waste crisis. These are three existential crises that threaten all of humanity.

In 2020 when we were consumed by the pandemic, climate change didn’t let up. 2020 was a year where we broke even, with both 2016 as the hottest year on record.

In 2020 we saw Atlantic hurricane season with more storms than ever recorded. We saw plagues of locusts from Yemen to East Africa, devouring our crops. We saw right now 2 billion people living in water stress. We’ve seen wildfires, floods, droughts. They have become so commonplace that many times they don’t even make the news.

And then there is the water, the biodiversity and nature crisis. Even as we talk about climate, we have to look at nature too, where our existence threatens nature severely.

Nature unravels

Nature is declining at an unprecedented speed. Around 1 million species of about 7.8 million that exist on our planet, are facing extinction. Humans have altered about 75% of the terrestrial surface of our planet. And we have altered about 66% of our oceans.

But while nature has intrinsic value, we also need to understand that nature’s loss is more than losing an orchid here, or a butterfly there. As we degrade our ecosystems, we are chipping away at the very foundations that make life possible.

Food, rainfall, temperature regulation, economic growth, pollination, the roofs over our heads, the clothes we wear, just to name but a few of nature’s services to us.

And then waste and pollution. There is that toxic trail of our economic growth. Every year pollution causes millions of premature deaths. Around one third of all rivers in Latin America, Asia and Africa suffer from severe pollution.

We throw away 50 million tonnes of electronic waste every year, roughly equal to the weight of all commercial airlines ever made.

The pandemic is obviously worsening the waste problem. Millions of disposable masks and PPE which we need making its way into the garbage stream.

We have known about these problems for some time. But the sad truth is that the world hasn’t acted strongly enough on the science before us.

That applies to the three planetary crisis and to every international agreement from the Sustainable Development Goals to the Paris Agreement to the Biodiversity Convention.

Failed commitments

Promises have been made. But now is the age of promises behind us. Now is the era of action.

As the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his State of the Planet speech in December 2020, making peace with nature is a defining task of the 21st century.

But the question is how to make that happen?

There are four areas where we can act: the economic and business sphere, governance, science and our everyday lives.

1. Economy and business

The starting point for making economic and business decisions that address the three planetary crisis is this. Instead of short term gain that brings long term pain, it is to recognise the true value of nature, and the Earth’s systems that regulate our seasons, our weather, our rainfall, and assures our very existence on this planet.

The Dasgupta review on the economics of biodiversity, makes clear that human health and prosperity cannot happen without nature. Over half of the global gross domestic product depends on nature.

Never mind the services that nature provides free of charge, such as climate regulation, water filtering, protection against natural disasters, and so on.

Economic benefit of biodiversity

Protecting nature and the climate, and limiting pollution and waste, is not only smart economic decision. Quite frankly they are non-negotiable for future economic prosperity.

But somehow, this seems to be a lesson that many have yet to learn. And it’s confounding to me.

It should be glaringly obvious that the old understanding that it’s economy versus environment just doesn’t hold true.

The increase in our wealth has come at the expense of our natural wealth, our natural capital, the planet stock of renewable and non renewable resources. They have declined by 40%.

In the same period, the WEF’s Global Risk Report 2020 ranked biodiversity and ecosystem collapse as one of the top five risks we would face within the next 10 years.

On the other hand, of course, ecosystems and biodiversity can bring huge economic benefits.

Overall the business opportunities from transforming the food, the land in the ocean systems could generate $3.6 trillion of additional revenue, while creating hundreds of millions of jobs.

Nature is an asset

So any way we slice and dice it, nature is an asset, an asset class that we need to think about. And we are eating into it much faster than it can regenerate.

To fix this error, we need to ensure that nature enters economic and financial decision making. We can’t assume that it is a free public good. The best way to assure that is one of the key ways is to move away from GDP as an indicator and use an inclusive wealth measure that measures all forms of capital.

The Global Commission on economy and climate told us that transitioning to low carbon growth could generate some $26 trillion and create over 65 million jobs by 2030. So tackling the three planetary crisis is a smart decision for economists and business.

2. Governance

Yes, the world has made many promises through the Sustainable Development Goals, through the Paris Agreement, through international goals and biodiversity and through goals on chemicals and pollution. But we haven’t done enough to move beyond the good intentions across the board.

Promises alone are not enough. Six years ago, nations arrived at this historic agreement in Paris to limit global warming this century to well below two degrees and to pursue 1.5. Yet now, our UNEP’s emissions gap report of December 2020 tells us that the pledges and actions under the Paris Agreement must get much stronger this year, or we are set towards a rise of over three degrees this century.

The pandemic-linked economic slowdown where we saw a dip in greenhouse gas emissions - yes, that did happen. But it will have a very, very, very negligible next-to-no-impact on global long term temperatures. That is because the CO2 bathtub was already full. So turning off the tap for a couple of seconds does not make it empty now.

Governments must deliver on commitments

To get back on track for a two degree world, we have no choice, but to cut one third of our emissions off by 2030. And if we want to, and we really do, aim for the 1.5 degree world, we have to halve our emissions.

It’s the same for biodiversity. In 2010 we agreed on a series of biodiversity targets that we had said we would reach by 2020. And by 2020 we have reached none of them. None!

So to catch up, governments must now act on three fronts. They must deliver on commitments made. They must strengthen and better focus their commitments. And they must ensure that actions on these three crises are joined up.

Clearly, the post pandemic recovery is a great way to speed up delivery. Every bit of UNEP research that we have produced in recent months shows us that for the pandemic recovery stimulus packages and this massive opportunity, never before have we put so much money - public money - into the economy.

We have calculated the potential to cut by around 25% our emissions by 2030 if we green these stimulus packages.

That would mean clearly ensuring that we do not borrow from the future generation and then leave them both with a broken planet and a mountain of debt.

What we therefore need to do is to put money into decarbonisation, into nature positive agriculture, into sustainable infrastructure, into climate change adaptation measures that protect the vulnerable, etc.

All-of-government dimension

That’s our target to make those recovery packages - stimulus packages – green on all fronts on all three crisis. And governments must make stronger, smarter and more trackable commitments right now.

So we need to be careful about not making just promises.

Like the person who pledges on January 1 to run a marathon by the end of the year, we have to get ready for that race. Net Zero commitments have been made. We celebrate that. But we cannot wait to turn these net zero commitments by 2050 into strong near term policies with time bound commitments that deliver action on the ground.

They must be included in what are called the NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) which are essentially the plans that countries would submit under Paris every five years.

So let’s submit stronger and more determined NDC’s so that we ensure we fold in the stimulus promises they are in. And the same for biodiversity.

We need to ensure that these targets are made. That we shift towards better managed conservation areas, that we deliver nature positive agriculture and fisheries, that we end harmful subsidies, that we move to sustainable patterns of production and consumption.

And the same goes for chemicals. We need chemicals in our economy. But we have to use them safely.

What can governments do?

They need to act in a joined up manner between governments, business, communities and citizens. Think what that means - a cooler climate, that will protect biodiversity, slow desertification, conserve nature, drive down poverty, help provide healthier lives and a healthier nature, store carbon, create buffers to impact on climate change.

Each one reinforces the other. Governments need to understand this and not delegate to the ministries of environment, or one department or the other. They must have an all-of-government dimension to the action plans that they roll out.

Science has done its job. Science has spoken. But like with good economics, it now needs to get into policies so we can and must do better. Science has to seek and speak out. It must understand diverse opinions and experiences.

Here we must accept that like with economics, science has not done as good a job as it could have done. Science and the world have been woken up to covert, overt, quiet, blind racism, sexism, white privilege. It is important that science of today understands bias and tackles the realities and the histories of the community that it touches.

We at UNEP work in science and we are very much aware of this. So we work to make science open, make it accessible and make it available to all. We have to digitise scientific knowledge and democratise its availability, so that people can access it, understand it and use it.

Ensuring that science speaks within the four walls of our homes is also critical. Without strong science that travels we cannot influence unsustainable consumption and production patterns which underpin our planetary crisis. People need to understand the impact that they have on the planet.

4. Our everyday lives

The fourth area is the personal responsibility that each one of us carries. Often when I speak to people they say “Yes! But this is so big that my actions don’t matter”.

So let me disabuse you of that notion. The fact is that if we live in the developed world, we are impacting on the planetary health unless we live off grid and we grow our own food. And we live with a rainwater that we’ve harvested. And we don’t travel, which we don’t do, most of us. But two thirds - two thirds - of all greenhouse gas emissions are linked to private households while our growing demands of food and materials are stripping the earth bare.

So right now, we require 1.6 Earths to maintain the current population and living standards. And of course, living standards are rising as they should. Many people need to move beyond the poverty in which they are now living. This means that there is an onus on those of us living wealthier lives, globally speaking.

This is an equity issue. The combined emissions of the richest 1% of the global population account for more than twice of the poorest 50%. Let that sink in for a moment.

Everyone has a responsibility

This global elite have no alternatives but to reduce our footprint, and significantly. Very significantly, So that we can stay within the Paris targets.

And just to be clear, an annual salary of $40,000 puts you in the top 10 of global earners, while around $110,000 puts you in the top 1%. So the top 1%, the global elite is at $110,000. This means that each one of us - whether we are in the top 10 – has a responsibility.

So we’re not talking about the mega wealthy. We’re talking about a responsibility that falls on us all. Each one of us have to look at our own lives.

I’m not here going to list everything that we can do because information is freely available. Let’s be honest: most of us know what we must do, from avoiding single use plastic to avoiding food waste, to being mindful of our travel and dietary choices, etc, etc. and our overall footprint.

We have a systems problem

It can be difficult to make choices that are good for the planet, particularly for those who struggle to make ends meet. But our societies depend heavily on fossil fuels, monoculture crops, wasteful packaging, and so much more.

So it is essential that we change that system. We do that politically, but we do that also by the individual choices. And by voting with our pound bills, or dollar bills or euros.

This will take time. But until then, we have to do what we can within the constraints of our circumstances - no matter how small - to change our lifestyles.

There’s no doubt that we have made progress on environmental issues in the last few decades. And we’ve made more commitments than ever.

We have more solutions available to us than ever. Business and investors are beginning to step up. Renewable energy is widespread and cheaper. Public awareness is at an all-time high. But climate change, nature loss, pollution and waste continue to outpace our efforts.

We can only overtake them if we speed up ourselves. We can and must do it.

COVID-19 has shown how quickly we can change our habits when we have to: bold leadership, tough decisions, and dedicated financing have saved lives. They have brought us to the point where within a year vaccination programmes are rolling out.

That same ingenuity. That same determination. That same commitment. That is what we now must draw on deeply to overcome what are really existential threats to humanity and the planet on which we hold so much sway.

Real, meaningful, and determined action to halt and reverse those three planetary crises is not just the smart option. It is the only option. If we want our economies and our businesses, our societies, and of course, our families to thrive and those that come after us to thrive, we have to take that action and to take it now.

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'By destroying nature we destroy ourselves'

Loss of nature carries a huge economic cost, but embracing it as a solution pays handsome dividends

The coronavirus might have its origins in the caves of Yunnan province, but make no mistake: nature did not create this crisis, we did. When we encroach on the natural world, we do more than cause environmental damage. The huge economic cost of the coronavirus pandemic is an illustration of a larger truth: we pay dearly when we destroy nature. 

The emergence of COVID-19 might have appeared an act of nature, but it was entirely predictable. David Quammen explained why in his prophetic book,  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic , published in 2012. “We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”

New diseases, however, are just the beginning. From coastal erosion to the decline of natural resources such as fisheries and forests, the loss of nature carries a huge economic cost. WWF , the international conservation non-governmental organization, estimates that the total figure over the next 30 years could be as much as £8 trillion. 

While some may disagree with the moral imperative to preserve the natural world, and the global commons, there can be no disagreement on the economic imperative of doing so, or the urgency of acting with speed and at scale. The economy, after all, is a wholly owned subsidiary of nature – not the other way around. And we are bankrupting it. 

The more important question, therefore, is what we can do. There are, I think, two answers – and neither will succeed without the other.  

The first is that we need to reset our relationship with nature by valuing it as the indispensable resource that it is. Rather than destroying our natural world, we need to apply “nature-based solutions” to our greatest challenges and create more robust resilience to systemic shocks in the future. Examples include the restoration of forests, wetlands, and peatlands in our countryside to help regulate water supply and protect communities from floods and landslides. 

Other approaches include protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems such as reefs and salt marshes, which guard coasts from storm surges and erosion. For centuries, we have encroached on natural habitats, but through collective action we can help turn back that tide. 

If we are to resolve the climate crisis, reduce inequality, maintain the wealth of nations and feed a growing global population, we must protect, restore, and sustainably manage nature. It is no longer enough for businesses to be “less bad,” or even “not bad.” We need to be good. We need to actively reverse the damage we have done. 

Besides being the right thing to do, this also makes economic and financial sense. The cost of inaction is simply too high. The World Economic Forum’s Nature Risk Rising  report has identified more than half of global GDP as moderately or highly dependent on nature.

Embracing nature as a solution is an investment, not a cost, and it is an investment that pays handsome dividends. Allowing a climate crisis to unfold is a risk that can be described, without overstatement, as existential.

The Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) has shown that a $350 billion annual investment in climate solutions would unlock $4.5 trillion in new business opportunities and save $5.7 trillion of damage to people and the planet by 2030. The World Economic Forum has estimated that the nature-positive economy could create nearly 400 million jobs in the next 10 years. 

Yet, with some exceptions, few countries and companies are integrating nature-based solutions in their strategies. They would be well advised to do so. 

What is missing, then, is my second solution: enough ambitious leaders who are willing to take bold action. Recent data suggests that the likelihood of our overshooting our Paris climate targets within the next five years has doubled.  As the summer fires in Brazil and Siberia remind us, we are running out of time to avert a runaway climate crisis. 

So 2020 must be the year that leaders across the world step up to act with courage and urgency. And without putting nature and nature-based solutions front and center of decision-making, they will not be able to meet the 1.5C climate targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 or prevent a catastrophic loss of biodiversity in the “sixth great extinction."

Businesses have an indispensable role to play. First, they should get their own house in order, individually and collectively, by acting together across their value chains and with each other to become nature-positive and carbon-neutral – giving back to nature and the climate more than they take. Examples of this are underway in the fashion and food industry.

In Malaysia, Nestlé restored more than 2,400 hectares of native forest along the Kinabatangan River by incentivizing local people to plant trees. In Mongolia, the luxury fashion brand Kering reduced grazing pressure on native grasslands and lowered costs by teaching cashmere farmers innovative herding and packing methods.

Such initiatives are welcome, but there are too few of them. We need to expand and accelerate our efforts dramatically. Given the lack of effective governance so evident around the world today, we need more than ever courageous business leaders to speak up and advocate for the right actions and policies, to use their voice and commitment to derisk the needed, more ambitious political action.

I encourage all businesses to sign up to Business for Nature’s global campaign  Nature is Everyone’s Business  to do that and to join a powerful collective business voice calling on governments to reverse nature loss this decade. 

While 2020 will forever be remembered as a year of pandemic, what will follow remains –  for now – within our hands. 

We have seen what happens when we make nature our enemy. If we instead make it our ally, helping us to help ourselves and in doing so create healthy societies, resilient economies and thriving businesses, we will have learnt the greatest lesson from this terrible period. The result will be a world that is not just safer, healthier and more equitable, but one that is prosperous too.

This piece was originally published for the GEF-Telegraph Partnership .

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Climate change impacts on nature

The impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world - from more frequent and severe storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires - threatening our cities, communities, crops, water, and wildlife. Climate change poses a fundamental threat to nature, species, and people – but it’s not too late to take collective action.

About climate change and nature

Climate change has already altered marine , terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems all around the world, causing species losses and declines in key ecosystem services. These climate-driven impacts on ecosystems have caused measurable economic and livelihood losses around the world.

The Paris Climate Agreement is a commitment of the international community to keep global warming well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. However, the latest IPCC report shows greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Current plans to address climate change are not ambitious enough to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—a threshold scientists believe is necessary to avoid even more catastrophic impacts. Above the 1.5 °C limit, the risks of extreme weather and collapsing ecosystems grow.

The actions of the international community between now and 2030 will determine whether we can collectively slow warming enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Heading 37%

of the mitigation needed between now and 2030 to meet the 2°C Paris goal can be provided by nature-based solutions.

Heading > 80%

of ecological processes that form the foundation for life on Earth are impacted by climate change.

How is IUCN limiting climate change impacts on nature?

Supporting a just and equitable transition.

IUCN works to accelerate a just and equitable transition to clean energy and a low carbon future , for the protection of people and the planet, especially including:

• promoting a global transition to clean and renewable energy sources ,
• engaging a suite of climate mitigation actions such as eliminating the use of coal for energy and reducing fossil fuel consumption,
• transforming agriculture and food systems,
• and halting deforestation .

Promoting Nature-based Solutions

In addition to cutting emissions, IUCN strongly advocates for a worldwide use of Nature-based Solutions , such as restoring ecosystems to absorb and sequester carbon already emitted or implementing  ecosystem-based adaptation to increase the resilience of ecosystems.

The latest IPCC report demonstrated that reducing the destruction of forests and other ecosystems, restoring them, and improving the management of working lands, such as farms — are among the top five most effective strategies for mitigating carbon emissions by 2030 .

IUCN engages on this issue from multiple perspectives, from assessing the risks that climate change poses to biodiversity, to advancing practical nature-based solutions for both climate mitigation and adaptation, centred on the better conservation, management and restoration of the world’s ecosystems, including:

• Enhance nature’s ability to store carbon across forests, drylands, and oceans by deploying Nature-based Solutions for climate mitigation, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and promoting forest landscape restoration and blue carbon initiatives.
• Catalyse the uptake of renewable energy best practices and supporting new, low-carbon technologies.
• Secure community resilience through Nature-based Solutions to adaptation, such as restoring mangroves and wetlands which reduce the impact of storms and floods, as well as hybrid solutions, such as green-grey infrastructure and integrated adaptation technologies .
• Support best practices in climate investments to minimise risks of maladaptation and ancillary negative impacts on people and biodiversity, such as developing best practices for the use of Nature-based Solutions as carbon offsets.
• Mobilize enhanced finance through multiple revenue streams to enable the implementation of Nature-based Solutions for climate change, such as through the Global EbA Fund , the Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility , the Subnational Climate Finance initiative, and the Nature+ Accelerator Fund.

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Human progress is no excuse to destroy nature. A push to make ‘ecocide’ a global crime must recognise this fundamental truth

Professor of Environmental Politics & International Relations, UNSW Sydney

Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney

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Scientists recently confirmed the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, due to uncontrolled burning and deforestation. It brings the crucial ecosystem closer to a tipping point that would see it replaced by savanna and trigger accelerated global heating.

This is not an isolated example of nature being damaged at a mass scale. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this month confirmed global heating is now affecting every continent, region and ocean on Earth. That includes Australia, which is a global deforestation hotspot and where the Great Barrier Reef is headed for virtual extinction .

In the face of such horrors, a new international campaign is calling for “ecocide” – the killing of ecology – to be deemed an international “ super crime ” in the order of genocide. The campaign has attracted high-profile supporters including French President Emmanuel Macron, Pope Francis and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Making ecocide an international crime is an appropriate response to the gravity of this harm and could help prevent mass environmental destruction. But whether it does so will depend on how the crime is defined.

Defining ecocide

The global campaign is being led by the Stop Ecocide Foundation . Last month an independent legal panel advising the campaign released a proposed amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It would make ecocide a crime, defining it as:

unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.

Defining a new international crime is a tricky balance. It must:

• capture the gravity, nature and extent of the harm
• set appropriate, but not impossible, standards of proof
• set moral standards that other international laws should follow.

The draft definition marks an important step in getting ecocide on the international agenda. And it does a good job of defining and balancing the core elements of ecocide – “severe” and either “widespread” or “long-term” damage to “any element of the environment”.

Laudably, these core elements show a concern for ecosystem integrity, human rights to a healthy environment, and the way grave damage to ecosystems can have devastating local and planetary consequences well into the future. This is a significant achievement.

Despite these strengths, lawyers and scholars , including ourselves, have identified problems with the definition.

Read more: Repeating mistakes: why the plan to protect the world’s wildlife falls short

Towards an ecological approach

A key concern is that the proposed definition considers only “unlawful” or “wanton” acts to be ecocide.

Most environmental destruction is not illegal. We need look no further than Australia’s land clearing laws or, indeed, federal environment law which has comprehensively failed to protect nature.

Under the proposed definition, lawful acts are only ecocidal if they are “wanton” – defined as “reckless disregard for damage which would be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic and benefits anticipated”.

This condition assumes some ecocidal damage is acceptable in the name of human progress. According to the panel, such “socially beneficial acts” might include building housing developments and transport links.

This assumption furthers the human-centred privilege and “ get-out-of-jail ” clauses that have so weakened international environmental law to date.

We are not saying that housing, transport links or farms should not be built. But, in a period some scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction , they cannot come at the expense of crucial species and ecosystems. Sustainable development must respect this boundary.

The assumption also fails to recognise the gravity of ecocide. Such trade-offs – formally known as “derogations” – are rejected by international conventions governing slavery, torture, sexual violence, and fundamental human rights.

For example, the Convention Against Torture states:

no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

An international crime of ecocide must meet a similar standard. It should recognise that all forms of life, and the ecological systems that support them, have value for their own sake.

This perspective is known as multispecies justice . It holds that human well-being is bound to flourishing ecosystems, which have an intrinsic value outside the human use for them.

Genocide – the annihilation of human groups – is recognised as a crime against humanity. As political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued, genocide is an attack on human diversity that erodes the “very nature of mankind” and poses a grave threat to global order.

In the same way, the definition of ecocide should recognise that acts which destroy biological diversity, and lead to species extinction, threaten the very nature and survival of Earth’s multi-species community.

In Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, the Balkans and more recently Myanmar , millions were killed and dispersed under a crime against humanity known as “ethnic cleansing”. Yet this killing and dispersal is happening to non-human communities as we write. The vast habitat destroyed by deforestation is as important to displaced animals as our homes are to us.

And this is a shared calamity. Mass environmental destruction is an attack on the foundations of all life that makes up the biosphere, of which humanity is only a part.

Read more: There's no end to the damage humans can wreak on the climate. This is how bad it's likely to get

What should be done?

The Stop Ecocide Foundation says the proposed definition will now be “made available for states to consider”.

As they do so, we ought to work towards a definition of ecocide that puts non-human lives at its centre. The crime of ecocide must be defined in a way that honours its victims – the myriad beings of the Earth.

In the meantime, political efforts to rein in biodiversity destruction must become an urgent global priority. And citizens can press their governments to criminalise the ecocidal acts that have become business as usual.

The Stop Ecocide Foundation chair Jojo Mehta provided the following response to this article:

The “unlawful or wanton” threshold is important, for the following reasons.

The other international crimes are based on acts which are already criminal under national laws. Not only would it be a stretch to expect states to accept a completely new across-the-board offence at international level, but it would crudely cut across both national legislation and the work of all those improving regulation and best practice.

With the word “unlawful”, existing laws in their specificity are given much needed reinforcement, and the evolution of new ones is supported. Thus the crime will dynamically grow more powerful, while respecting differences between national bodies of law.

“Wanton” addresses cases where the activity is legal but the likely destruction is disproportionately severe. It shouldn’t be assumed that the social and economic benefits mentioned are those of investors or wealthy consumers, nor that these will outweigh damage.

Effects, including cultural effects, on local and indigenous communities, and the wider implications of ecological harm, must be considered too.

This definition doesn’t aim to prevent each and every form of environmental harm – that is the job of national laws and regulations - but to make it clear that provoking the worst harms is a deeply serious crime worthy of sitting alongside genocide and war crimes. This is an incredibly powerful and – we believe – a profoundly transformative message.

Read more: Ordinary people, extraordinary change: addressing the climate emergency through 'quiet activism'

• International law
• Great Barrier Reef
• land clearing
• Environmental damage
• Environmental destruction
• environmental laws
• International crime

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Essay on Human Destroying Nature

Students are often asked to write an essay on Human Destroying Nature in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Human Destroying Nature

Introduction.

Humans and nature have always shared a connection. But recently, this bond is being harmed by human activities.

The Destruction

Deforestation, pollution, and global warming are major issues. Trees are cut down for industries, harming wildlife and causing climate change.

Effects on Nature

Nature suffers as species lose their homes and pollution harms the air and water. This imbalance can lead to disasters like floods and droughts.

We must learn to respect nature. By reducing pollution and planting more trees, we can help protect our planet for future generations.

250 Words Essay on Human Destroying Nature

Human beings, in their quest for development, are significantly impacting the natural world. The anthropogenic activities, driven by industrialization and urbanization, are causing irreparable damage to nature.

Deforestation and Habitat Loss

Forests, the lungs of our planet, are being ruthlessly cut down for timber, agriculture, and infrastructure. This rampant deforestation is not just eradicating millions of species but also disrupting the carbon cycle, leading to climate change.

Overexploitation of Natural Resources

The insatiable human desire for resources is exhausting the Earth’s reserves. Overfishing, overhunting, and over-mining are pushing many species to the brink of extinction and depleting our non-renewable resources.

Climate Change

Human-induced climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming, ocean acidification, and extreme weather events. These changes threaten biodiversity, human health, and the stability of societies.

Plastic Pollution

The plastic menace is another significant issue. It not only pollutes our lands and oceans but also harms wildlife that mistake it for food.

The relentless human assault on nature is a ticking time bomb. It is crucial to understand that the survival of humanity is intertwined with the health of our planet. Sustainable development should be our guiding principle, where we meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It’s high time we shifted from being nature’s conquerors to its custodians.

500 Words Essay on Human Destroying Nature

The human impact on nature.

The relationship between humans and nature is complex and multifaceted. While nature provides us with the resources necessary for survival and growth, our actions often lead to its degradation. This essay aims to examine the ways in which human activities are destroying nature and the potential repercussions of such actions.

The Industrial Revolution and Its Aftermath

The Industrial Revolution marked a significant turning point in human history. While it led to remarkable advancements in technology and living standards, it also ushered in an era of unprecedented environmental destruction. The increased demand for natural resources led to deforestation, soil erosion, and the extinction of several species. Industrial waste polluted rivers and oceans, while the burning of fossil fuels contributed to global warming.

Urbanization and Habitat Destruction

As the human population expands, so does the demand for land. Urbanization has led to the destruction of natural habitats, threatening biodiversity. Forests are cleared to make way for cities, roads, and agriculture, leading to the displacement of countless species. This not only disrupts the ecological balance but also increases the risk of human-animal conflict.

Climate Change: A Threat of Our Own Making

Human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, are major contributors to climate change. The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to a rise in global temperatures, resulting in melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and extreme weather conditions. These changes pose a significant threat to both humans and wildlife.

The Plastics Problem

The proliferation of plastic waste is another example of human-induced environmental harm. Non-biodegradable and toxic, plastics pollute our land and water bodies, harming wildlife and contaminating food chains. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive accumulation of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean, is a stark reminder of our throwaway culture.

The Path Forward

Despite the grim picture painted above, all is not lost. We have the knowledge and tools to mitigate the harm we’ve inflicted on nature. Sustainable practices in agriculture, energy production, and waste management can help reduce our environmental footprint. Conservation efforts can protect endangered species and restore damaged ecosystems. Education and awareness can foster a culture of respect for nature.

In conclusion, the destruction of nature by human activities is a pressing issue that requires immediate attention. The survival of our species is intricately linked with the health of our planet. It is our responsibility to ensure that future generations inherit a world where nature thrives in all its diversity and splendor.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Importance of Nature
• Essay on Conservation of Nature
• Essay on Beauty of Nature

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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April 2, 2024

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Scientists' urgent call: End destruction and forge a just, sustainable future

by Marcie Grabowski, University of Hawaii at Manoa

An international team of scientists has published a study in PNAS Nexus , emphasizing the urgent need to align political will, economic resources, and societal values to ensure a more sustainable and equitable world. Led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researchers, the 18 authors combine their expertise in Earth and ocean sciences, politics, law, public health, renewable energy, geography, communications, and ethnic studies to assess causes, impacts, and solutions to a multitude of worldwide crises.

"Climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socio-economic inequality are pressing global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century," said Chip Fletcher, lead author and interim Dean of the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. "These crises are not isolated problems but are interwoven, exacerbate each other, and create amplifying feedbacks that pose a grave threat to both the environment and human well-being."

"Environmental and human health are inextricably linked," said David Karl, co-author and professor of oceanography at UH Mānoa. "Urgent and comprehensive action is called for, including rapid decarbonization, fostering a more harmonious relationship with nature, and equitable human development."

Global cultural shift

The authors argue that centuries of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and population growth have pushed Earth's ecosystems beyond their limits, and created a broadening pattern of social inequality. The review summarizes the grave threats facing the planet but rejects a "doom and gloom" philosophy. Instead, the authors argue, the threats should motivate swift and substantial actions.

According to the authors, a global economic model focused on wealth accumulation and profit, rather than true sustainability, is a major impediment to decarbonization, conserving natural resources, and ensuring social equity. Therefore, the authors argue, governments should enforce radical, immediate cuts in fossil fuel use, eliminate environmentally harmful subsidies, and restrict trade that generates pollution or unsustainable consumption.

The most vulnerable human populations, those who bear the least responsibility, disproportionately bear the consequences of these interwoven global crises. The broadening pattern of this inequity breeds displacement, disease, disillusionment, and dissatisfaction that ultimately erode social cohesion.

A grossly unequal distribution of wealth has coupled with the increasing consumption patterns of a rising global middle class to amplify ecological destruction. Studies show that the poorest half of the global population owns barely 2% of total global wealth, while the richest 10% owns 76% of all wealth. The poorest 50% of the global population contribute just 10% of emissions, while the richest 10% emit more than 50% total carbon emissions. Climate change, economic inequality , and rising consumption levels intertwine to amplify ecological destruction.

Marine and terrestrial biomes face critical tipping points, while escalating challenges to food and water access foreshadow a bleak outlook for global security. The consequences of these actions are disproportionately borne by vulnerable populations, further entrenching global inequities.

"To avoid these consequences, we advocate a global cultural shift that elevates kinship with nature and communal well-being, underpinned by the recognition of Earth's finite resources and the interconnectedness of its inhabitants," said Krista Hiser, professor of English at Kapiolani Community College at the University of Hawai'i.

Kinship with nature

The authors welcome signs that humanity is interested in changing its value system to prioritize justice and reciprocity within human societies and between humans and natural landscapes and ecosystems, which they see as the best route to true sustainability.

According to Phoebe Barnard, affiliate professor at the University of Washington, "The imperative is clear: To navigate away from this precipice, we must collectively harness political will, economic resources , and societal values to steer toward a future where human progress does not come at the cost of ecological integrity and social equity."

The authors call for a global cultural shift in values, aided by education, robust policy, economic incentives, cross-sector partnerships, community empowerment, corporate accountability, technological innovation, leadership, and cultural narratives delivered through art and media. They conclude that humanity must stop treating these issues as isolated challenges and establish a systemic response based on kinship with nature that recognizes Earth as our lifeboat in the cosmic sea of space.

Journal information: PNAS Nexus

Provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa

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Scientists' urgent call: End destruction and forge a just, sustainable future

An international team of scientists published a study today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences NEXUS emphasizing the urgent need to align political will, economic resources, and societal values to ensure a more sustainable and equitable world. Led by University of Hawai'i at Manoa researchers, the 18 authors combine their expertise in earth and ocean sciences, politics, law, public health, renewable energy, geography, communications, and ethnic studies to assess causes, impacts, and solutions to a multitude of worldwide crises.

"Climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socio-economic inequality are pressing global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century," said Chip Fletcher, lead author and interim Dean of the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. "These crises are not isolated problems but are interwoven, exacerbate each other, and create amplifying feedbacks that pose a grave threat to both the environment and human well-being."

"Environmental and human health are inextricably linked," said David Karl, co-author and professor of oceanography at UH Manoa. "Urgent and comprehensive action is called for, including rapid decarbonization, fostering a more harmonious relationship with nature, and equitable human development."

Global cultural shift

The authors argue that centuries of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and population growth have pushed Earth's ecosystems beyond their limits, and created a broadening pattern of social inequality. The review summarizes the grave threats facing the planet but rejects a "doom and gloom" philosophy. Instead, the authors argue, the threats should motivate swift and substantial actions.

According to the authors, a global economic model focused on wealth accumulation and profit, rather than true sustainability, is a major impediment to decarbonization, conserving natural resources, and ensuring social equity. Therefore, the authors argue, governments should enforce radical, immediate cuts in fossil fuel use, eliminate environmentally harmful subsidies, and restrict trade that generates pollution or unsustainable consumption.

The most vulnerable human populations, those who bear the least responsibility, disproportionately bear the consequences of these interwoven global crises. The broadening pattern of this inequity breeds displacement, disease, disillusionment, and dissatisfaction that ultimately erode social cohesion.

A grossly unequal distribution of wealth has coupled with the increasing consumption patterns of a rising global middle class to amplify ecological destruction. Studies show that the poorest half of the global population owns barely 2% of total global wealth, while the richest 10% owns 76% of all wealth. The poorest 50% of the global population contribute just 10% of emissions, while the richest 10% emit more than 50% total carbon emissions. Climate change, economic inequality, and rising consumption levels intertwine to amplify ecological destruction.

Marine and terrestrial biomes face critical tipping points, while escalating challenges to food and water access foreshadow a bleak outlook for global security. The consequences of these actions are disproportionately borne by vulnerable populations, further entrenching global inequities.

"To avoid these consequences, we advocate a global cultural shift that elevates kinship with nature and communal well-being, underpinned by the recognition of Earth's finite resources and the interconnectedness of its inhabitants," said Krista Hiser, professor of English at Kapiolani Community College at the University of Hawai'i.

Kinship with nature

The authors welcome signs that humanity is interested in changing its value system to prioritize justice and reciprocity within human societies and between humans and natural landscapes and ecosystems, which they see as the best route to true sustainability.

According to Phoebe Barnard, affiliate professor at the University of Washington, "The imperative is clear: to navigate away from this precipice, we must collectively harness political will, economic resources, and societal values to steer toward a future where human progress does not come at the cost of ecological integrity and social equity."

The authors call for a global cultural shift in values, aided by education, robust policy, economic incentives, cross-sector partnerships, community empowerment, corporate accountability, technological innovation, leadership, and cultural narratives delivered through art and media. They conclude that humanity must stop treating these issues as isolated challenges and establish a systemic response based on kinship with nature that recognizes Earth as our lifeboat in the cosmic sea of space.

• Environmental Issues
• Environmental Awareness
• Environmental Policy
• Environmental Policies
• Resource Shortage
• Political Science
• Ocean Policy
• Conservation ethic
• National security
• Water scarcity
• Western culture
• Sustainable land management
• Water resources
• Ecological niche

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa . Original written by Marcie Grabowski. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Charles Fletcher, William J Ripple, Thomas Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Aishwarya Behl, Jay Bowen, Michael Cooney, Eileen Crist, Christopher Field, Krista Hiser, David M Karl, David A King, Michael E Mann, Davianna P McGregor, Camilo Mora, Naomi Oreskes, Michael Wilson. Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future . PNAS Nexus , 2024; 3 (4) DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae106

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Strange & offbeat.

Nature: Once-abundant rusty blackbird threatened by habitat destruction

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

— From "Sing a Song of Sixpence," author uncertain

The rusty blackbird’s scientific name is Euphagus carolinus . The genus name, Euphagus (you-fa-gus) means “good to eat.” While few if any modern-day gourmands would contemplate working blackbirds into meals, such was not the case in the late 19 th century. Barrels of songbirds were shipped to markets in large cities to be eaten.

Fortunately, wholesale slaughters of songbirds for food ended long ago, but plenty of other threats have arisen. The little-known (at least among non-birders) rusty blackbird epitomizes species that are apparently dying a slow death. Threats to the charismatic blackbird are both acute and quantifiable and seemingly vague and hard to define.

Nature: Native plant update: Of Ohio's 1,800 native plants species, 271 are endangered, 93 are gone

The morning of March 24 dawned clear and crisp and Shauna Weyrauch, an Ohio State University researcher, and I headed to the vast wetlands of Killbuck Marsh Wildlife Area near Wooster. Cameras in hand and the temperature at 22 degrees, we set out into the marshes to photograph the scores of northern pintail and other ducks that were present. Killbuck encompasses nearly 6,000 acres and is an important waystation for migrant waterfowl.

Our trek took us by waterlogged swamp forests and marshes ringed by large stands of buttonbush . The plant is a shrub of saturated soils, often growing in standing water. It forms nearly impenetrable thickets and is important to many species of animals. Wood ducks feast on its fruit, green herons and night herons stalk amphibians in the tangles and come summer, scores of pollinators visit buttonbush’s white flower clusters.

Buttonbush a natural habitat

Buttonbush is also an invaluable habitat to migratory rusty blackbirds. As we passed by the buttonbush swamps, I began to hear the squeaky gurgles of rusty blackbirds. Most of the birds were deep in the plants, strutting among the wet leaf litter, flipping leaves to uncover macroinvertebrate animal life.

In all, we eventually estimated about 300 rusty blackbirds were present — the largest flock that I’ve seen in many years. Occasionally, birds would perch in the open, such as the one in the accompanying photo. Males glare with bold yellow eyes and their plumage is an artistic montage of metallic blue and black, with contrasting buffy feather edges. The female is a muted, ashy gray.

Most rusty blackbirds winter in the southern states, from Arkansas and Mississippi to the Atlantic coast, with small numbers sticking it out in more northerly latitudes such as Ohio. The birds we saw were migrants from points south, and March sees the largest movement of northbound birds through this region.

Nature: Venomous madtom catfish a lesser known species in Ohio that packs a punch

Rusty blackbirds breed far to the north of Ohio, over the length and breadth of the boreal forest. They nest from Alaska to Newfoundland, and north to the shores of Hudson Bay. This is the most northerly of North American blackbirds, and some birds probably travel 1,500 or more miles between breeding and wintering grounds. The Killbuck blackbirds still have a long way to go, chasing the tail end of winter northward.

Loss of habitat affecting blackbirds

Once abundant throughout its range, the rusty blackbird has experienced a cataclysmic decline in recent decades. Some estimates peg the total population loss at 85-95%. Some of the contributing factors are clear-cut. Rusty blackbirds are dependent on wooded wetlands at all seasons, and wetland losses have been enormous in the bird’s migratory corridors and wintering grounds.

About 90% of Ohio’s wetlands have been drained or otherwise destroyed, and equally grim statistics apply in many other states. Logging of breeding habitats in the north has been shown to adversely affect breeding success, and the loss or decline of beavers in some regions has had negative impacts. The mammalian engineers create wonderful rusty blackbird nesting habitat in the backwaters of their dams.

Large-scale slaughter of wintering blackbird roosts, especially in southern states, to protect agricultural interests has certainly taken a toll on rusty blackbirds, even though they normally constitute a small percentage of such flocks.

Nature/Opinion: American Ornithological Society set to rename honorific birds

More insidious is chemical contamination , especially by mercury. Over the past century and a half, human activities such as production of electricity, mining and waste incineration have more than doubled the natural levels of mercury in the environment. Mercury accumulates in wetland sediments — the foraging habitat for rusty blackbirds. In some regions, mercury levels in rusty blackbirds are the highest reported for any songbird species. Such toxicity has been shown to lead to poor reproductive success in birds.

The rusty blackbird is a bellwether of a degraded environment. We would be wise to pay attention to what this charismatic blackbird is telling us.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jim mccormac.blogspot.com .

A Solar Eclipse Means Big Science

By Katrina Miller April 1, 2024

• Share full article

On April 8, cameras all over North America will make a “megamovie” of the sun’s corona, like this one from the 2017 eclipse. The time lapse will help scientists track the behavior of jets and plumes on the sun’s surface.

There’s more science happening along the path of totality →

An app named SunSketcher will help the public take pictures of the eclipse with their phones.

Scientists will use these images to study deviations in the shape of the solar surface , which will help them understand the sun’s churning behavior below.

The sun right now is approaching peak activity. More than 40 telescope stations along the eclipse’s path will record totality.

By comparing these videos to what was captured in 2017 — when the sun was at a lull — researchers can learn how the sun’s magnetism drives the solar wind, or particles that stream through the solar system.

Students will launch giant balloons equipped with cameras and sensors along the eclipse’s path.

Their measurements may improve weather forecasting , and also produce a bird’s eye view of the moon’s shadow moving across the Earth.

Ham radio operators will send signals to each other across the path of totality to study how the density of electrons in Earth’s upper atmosphere changes .

This can help quantify how space weather produced by the sun disrupts radar communication systems.

(Animation by Dr. Joseph Huba, Syntek Technologies; HamSCI Project, Dr. Nathaniel Frissell, the University of Scranton, NSF and NASA.)

NASA is also studying Earth’s atmosphere, but far from the path of totality.

In Virginia, the agency will launch rockets during the eclipse to measure how local drops in sunlight cause ripple effects hundreds of miles away . The data will clarify how eclipses and other solar events affect satellite communications, including GPS.

Biologists in San Antonio plan to stash recording devices in beehives to study how bees orient themselves using sunlight , and how the insects respond to the sudden atmospheric changes during a total eclipse.

Two researchers in southern Illinois will analyze social media posts to understand tourism patterns in remote towns , including when visitors arrive, where they come from and what they do during their visits.

Results can help bolster infrastructure to support large events in rural areas.

Read more about the eclipse:

Our Coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse

Hearing the Eclipse:  A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience what they can’t see .

Maine Brac es Itself :  Businesses and planning committees are eager for visitors, but some in remote Aroostook County are not sure how they feel  about lying smack in the path of totality.

A Dark Day for Buffalo:  When the sky above Buffalo briefly goes dark  on the afternoon of April 8, the city will transcend its dreary place in the public consciousness — measured as it so often is by snowstorms — if only for about three minutes. The city can’t wait.

Under the Moon’s Shadow:  The late Jay Pasachoff, who spent a lifetime chasing eclipses , inspired generations of students to become astronomers by dragging them to the ends of the Earth for a few precarious moments of ecstasy.

A Rare Return:  It is rare for a total solar eclipse to hit the same place twice — once every 366 years on average. People in certain areas will encounter April 8’s eclipse  about seven years after they were near the middle of the path of the “Great American Eclipse.”

A Small City’s Big Plans:  Let the big cities have their eclipse mega-events. In Plattsburgh, N.Y., success looks different  for everyone stopping to look up.

 No Power Outages:  When the sky darkens during the eclipse, electricity production in some parts of the country will drop so sharply that it could theoretically leave tens of millions of homes in the dark. In practice, hardly anyone will notice  a sudden loss of energy.

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Human destruction of nature is 'senseless and suicidal', warns UN chief

UN report offers bedrock for hope for broken planet, says António Guterres

Humanity is waging a “senseless and suicidal” war on nature that is causing human suffering and enormous economic losses while accelerating the destruction of life on Earth, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said.

Guterres’s starkest warning to date came at the launch of a UN report setting out the triple emergency the world is in: the climate crisis, the devastation of wildlife and nature, and the pollution that causes many millions of early deaths every year.

Making peace with nature was the defining task of the coming decades, he said, and the key to a prosperous and sustainable future for all people. The report combines recent major UN assessments with the latest research and the solutions available, representing an authoritative scientific blueprint of how to repair the planet.

The report says societies and economies must be transformed by policies such as replacing GDP as an economic measure with one that reflects the true value of nature, as recommended this month by a study commissioned by the UK Treasury .

Carbon emissions need to be taxed , and trillions of dollars of “perverse” subsidies for fossil fuels and destructive farming must be diverted to green energy and food production, the report says. As well as systemic changes, people in rich nations can act too, it says, by cutting meat consumption and wasting less energy and water.

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal,” said Guterres. “The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses, and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth.”

The triple emergency threatened our viability as a species, he said. But ending the war would not mean poorer living standards or an end to poverty reduction. “On the contrary, making peace with nature, securing its health and building on the critical and undervalued benefits that it provides are key to a prosperous and sustainable future for all.”

“This report provides the bedrock for hope,” he said. “It makes clear our war on nature has left the planet broken. But it also guides us to a safer place by providing a peace plan and a postwar rebuilding programme.”

Inger Andersen, the head of the UN Environment Programme (Unep), said: “We need to look no further than the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, a disease transmitted from animals to humans, to know that the finely tuned system of the natural world has been disrupted.” Unep and the World Health Organization have said the root cause of pandemics is the destruction of the natural world , with worse outbreaks to come unless action is taken.

The report says the fivefold growth of the global economy in the last 50 years was largely fuelled by a huge increase in the extraction of fossil fuels and other resources, and has come at massive cost to the environment. The world population has doubled since 1970 and while average prosperity has also doubled, 1.3 billion people remain in poverty and 700 million are hungry.

It says current measures to tackle the environmental crises are far short of what is needed: the world remains on track for catastrophic warming of 3C above pre-industrial levels, a million species face extinction and 90% of people live with dirty air .

“We use three-quarters of the land and two-thirds of the oceans – we are completely dominating the Earth,” said Ivar Baste of the Norwegian Environment Agency, a lead author of the report.

Prof Sir Robert Watson, who has led UN scientific assessments on climate and biodiversity and is the other lead author of the report, said: “We have got a triple emergency and these three issues are all interrelated and have to be dealt with together. They’re no longer just environmental issues – they are economic issues, development issues, security issues, social, moral and ethical issues.

“Of all the things we have to do, we have to really rethink our economic and financial systems. Fundamentally, GDP doesn’t take nature into account. We need to get rid of these perverse subsidies, they are $5-7tn a year. If you could move some of these towards low-carbon technology and investing in nature, then the money is there.”

This meant taking on companies and countries with vested interests in fossil fuels, he said: “There are a lot of people that really like these perverse subsidies. They love the status quo. So governments have to have the guts to act”.

Financial institutions could play a huge role, Watson said, by ending funding for fossil fuels, the razing of forests and large-scale monoculture agriculture. Companies should act too, he said: “Proactive companies see that if they can be sustainable, they can be first movers and make a profit. But in some cases, regulation will almost certainly be needed for those companies that don’t care.”

Pollution was included in the report because despite improvements in some wealthy nations, toxic air, water, soils and workplaces cause at least 9 million deaths a year , one in six of all deaths. “This is still a huge issue,” said Baste.

The world’s nations will gather at two crucial UN summits in 2021 on the climate and biodiversity crises. “We know we failed miserably on the biodiversity targets [set in 2010],” said Watson. “I’ll be very disappointed if at these summits all they talk about is targets and goals. They’ve got to talk about actions – that’s really what’s crucial.”

• Climate crisis
• Biodiversity
• Deforestation
• Fossil fuels
• United Nations

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• 20 March 2024
• Correction 21 March 2024

Mathematician who tamed randomness wins Abel Prize

• Davide Castelvecchi

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Michel Talagrand studies stochastic processes, mathematical models of phenomena that are governed by randomness. Credit: Peter Bagde/Typos1/Abel Prize 2024

A mathematician who developed formulas to make random processes more predictable and helped to solve an iconic model of complex phenomena has won the 2024 Abel Prize, one of the field’s most coveted awards. Michel Talagrand received the prize for his “contributions to probability theory and functional analysis, with outstanding applications in mathematical physics and statistics”, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo announced on 20 March.

Assaf Naor, a mathematician at Princeton University in New Jersey, says it is difficult to overestimate the impact of Talagrand’s work. “There are papers posted maybe on a daily basis where the punchline is ‘now we use Talagrand’s inequalities’,” he says.

Talagrand’s reaction on hearing the news was incredulity. “There was a total blank in my mind for at least four seconds,” he says. “If I had been told an alien ship had landed in front of the White House, I would not have been more surprised.”

The Abel Prize was modelled after the Nobel Prizes — which do not include mathematics — and was first awarded in 2003. The recipient wins a sum of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner (US$700,000).

‘Like a piece of art’

Talagrand specializes in the theory of probability and stochastic processes, which are mathematical models of phenomena governed by randomness. A typical example is a river’s water level, which is highly variable and is affected by many independent factors, including rain, wind and temperature, Talagrand says. His proudest achievement was his inequalities 1 , a set of formulas that poses limits to the swings in stochastic processes. His formulas express how the contributions of many factors often cancel each other out — making the overall result less variable, not more.

“It’s like a piece of art,” says Abel-committee chair Helge Holden, a mathematician at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. “The magic here is to find a good estimate, not just a rough estimate.”

Abel Prize: pioneer of ‘smooth’ physics wins top maths award

Thanks to Talagrand’s techniques, “many things that seem complicated and random turn out to be not so random”, says Naor. His estimates are extremely powerful, for example for studying problems such as optimizing the route of a delivery truck. Finding a perfect solution would require an exorbitant amount of computation, so computer scientists can instead calculate the lengths of a limited number of random candidate routes and then take the average — and Talagrand’s inequalities ensure that the result is close to optimal.

Talagrand also completed the solution to a problem posed by theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi — work that ultimately helped Parisi to earn a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021. In 1979, Parisi, now at the University of Rome, proposed a complete solution for the structure of a spin glass — an abstracted model of a material in which the magnetization of each atom tends to flip up or down depending on those of its neighbours.

Parisi’s arguments were rooted in his powerful intuition in physics, and followed steps that “mathematicians would consider as sorcery”, Talagrand says, such as taking n copies of a system — with n being a negative number. Many researchers doubted that Parisi’s proof could be made mathematically rigorous. But in the early 2000s, the problem was completely solved in two separate works, one by Talagrand 2 and an earlier one by Francesco Guerra 3 , a mathematical physicist who is also at the University of Rome.

Finding motivation

Talagrand’s journey to becoming a top researcher was unconventional. Born in Béziers, France, in 1952, he lost vision in his right eye at age five because of a genetic predisposition to detachment of the retina. Although while growing up in Lyon he was a voracious reader of popular science magazines, he struggled at school, particularly with the complex rules of French spelling. “I never really made peace with orthography,” he told an interviewer in 2019 .

His turning point came at age 15, when he received emergency treatment for another retinal detachment, this time in his left eye. He had to miss almost an entire year of school. The terrifying experience of nearly losing his sight — and his father’s efforts to keep his mind busy while his eyes were bandaged — gave Talagrand a renewed focus. He became a highly motivated student after his recovery, and began to excel in national maths competitions.

Just 5 women have won a top maths prize in the past 90 years

Still, Talagrand did not follow the typical path of gifted French students, which includes two years of preparatory school followed by a national admission competition for highly selective grandes écoles such as the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Instead, he studied at the University of Lyon, France, and then went on to work as a full-time researcher at the national research agency CNRS, first in Lyon and later in Paris, where he spent more than a decade in an entry-level job. Apart from a brief stint in Canada, followed by a trip to the United States where he met his wife, he worked at the CNRS until his retirement.

Talagrand loves to challenge other mathematicians to solve problems that he has come up with — offering cash to those who do — and he keeps a list of those problems on his website. Some have been solved, leading to publications in major maths journals . The prizes come with some conditions: “I will award the prizes below as long as I am not too senile to understand the proofs I receive. If I can’t understand them, I will not pay.”

Nature 627 , 714-715 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00839-6

Updates & Corrections

Correction 21 March 2024 : An earlier version of this article stated that Giorgio Parisi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001. He in fact won in 2021.

Talagrand, M. Publ. Math. IHES 81 , 73–205, (1995).

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Talagrand, M. Ann. Math. 163 , 221–263 (2006).

Guerra, F. Commun. Math. Phys. 233 , 1–12 (2003).

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