SDG 15: LIFE ON LAND

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Introduction -

“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on.” ~Henry David Thoreau.

Nature is critical for our survival and all life on earth is supported with the help of ecosystems. Hence, to combat climate change, end poverty, and prevent mass extinction, the degradation of ecosystems needs to be reversed. Up to 31 percent of our planet’s land area is covered by forests. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and even the food we eat are derived from forests to sustain us. More than 1.6 billion people depend upon forests to sustain themselves, which includes 70 million indigenous people.

Forests are home to not just 80 percent of all terrestrial species of animals and plants but also insects and microorganisms. However, biodiversity is declining at a rate faster than at any other time in human history. Just in the last century, tropical forests which are home to around two-thirds of the world’s living organisms, have been halved. Globally, one-fifth of the Earth’s land area (i.e. more than 2 billion hectares) are degraded, a neighbourhood nearly the dimensions of India and Russia combined. Land degradation is undermining the well-being of around 3.2 billion people and is driving species to extinction and intensifying global climate change.

Why are forests, ecosystems & Biodiversity important?

1. Covid-19 outbreak

In 2016, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledged that 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic – diseases transmitted from wildlife to people – which means these zoonotic diseases are closely interlinked with the health of ecosystems. By disrupting ecosystems, we've created the conditions that allow animal viruses to cross over into human populations.

Emerging infectious diseases in wildlife, livestock, plants, or people are often exacerbated by human activities like land clearing and habitat fragmentation or the overuse of antibiotics driving the rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance in many bacterial pathogens. Increased demand for animal protein, an increase in intense and unsustainable farming, the increased use and exploitation of wildlife, and therefore the climate crisis are all driving the increased emergence of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19. Pangolins are possibly the intermediary animal that transferred the coronavirus. The equivalent of 370,000 pangolins was seized globally between 2014 and 2018.

Per annum, some two million people, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, die from neglected zoonotic diseases. constant outbreaks can cause severe illness, deaths, and productivity losses among livestock populations within the developing world, a serious problem that keeps countless small-scale farmers in severe poverty. within the last 20 years alone, zoonotic diseases have caused economic losses of over $100 billion, not including the value of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is predicted to exceed $9 trillion over the subsequent few years.

2. Ecosystem services

Nature determines our quality of life by providing and regulating basic life support for humanity and by satisfying our need for material goods. But there's unequal access to nature’s contributions and unequal impact of nature’s contributions on different social groups. Furthermore, a rise within the production of a couple of nature’s contributions causes declines in others. For example, the clearing of forests for agriculture has increased the availability of food, feed, and other materials important for people (such as natural fibers and decorative flowers), but has reduced contributions as diverse as pollination, climate regulation, and water quality regulation. Moreover, many of nature’s contributions to people are essential for human health and their decline thus threatens a good quality of life.

3. Species Extinction

The global rate of species extinction is a hundred times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years and it is accelerating. A recent UN report on biodiversity found that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, in only a couple of decades.

An average of around 25 percent of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and plant groups are threatened with extinction according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List criteria. Of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species (75 percent being insects), around 1 million are threatened with extinction.

Global terrestrial habitats have reduced by 30 percent largely due to human actions causing habitat loss and deterioration. Around 9 percent of the world’s estimated 5.9 million terrestrial species – over 500,000 species – are found to possess insufficient habitat for long-term survival, and are threatened of extinction unless their habitats are restored.

Figure 3 Examples of global declines in nature, emphasizing declines in biodiversity, that have been and are being caused by direct and indirect drivers of change.

Goals for conserving and sustainably using nature: