Five Takeaways from the Latest UN Report on Biodiversity and Why It Matters to All of Us

A UN report released earlier this week warned that we are headed for a catastrophic loss of biodiversity, with up to a million different species of plants and animals facing extinction. The authors of the report concluded that if we don’t do something now to avert this planetary crisis, the loss will have a drastic impact on life as humans know it.

These reports can be overwhelming in nature (no pun intended) and give us the sense that we’re all doomed, so we’ve honed in on five key takeaways from the report that you need to know:

2We Are Overfishing the Seas

Greenpeace biodiversity Belatina
Photo Credit IG @greenpeace

Overfishing is the other glaring threat to biodiversity, one that will severely limit the sources of protein for coastal populations that rely upon sea creatures for subsistence as well as for their wages. Countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and Spain heavily subsidize their fishing industries, which incentivizes deep-ocean fishing that would otherwise be unprofitable, according to data referenced by Bloomberg News; these subsidies end up encouraging unsustainable overfishing rather than allowing fishing industries to be built around maintaining abundant coast fish stocks.

By the way, the fishing industry is one of the biggest plastic polluters. Researchers have estimated that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up mostly of fishing gear rather than consumer plastics that we use and discard in our everyday lives.