Climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Jun 2024
Climate change and land-use change could become the main drivers of biodiversity decline by mid-century according to a new study.
The new multi-model study global trends and scenarios for terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050 published in the journal Science reveals that land-use change has been considered the largest driver of biodiversity decline in the 20th century.
Land-use change is, for example, the conversion of forest into farmland or pasture. It has contributed significantly to biodiversity decline in the 20th century and today.
Global biodiversity declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone. The projections show climate change could also become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century.
The analytical study was led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and is the largest modelling study of its kind to date. The researchers compared thirteen models for assessing the impact of land-use change and climate change on four distinct biodiversity metrics, as well as on nine ecosystem services. A