Sustainable biodiversity?

"Up to a million of Earth's estimated eight million species face extinction, many of them in the coming decades." There are two big indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change -- the number of people in the world and their growing ability to consume. Food production -- accounts for a third of land, 75 percent of fresh water use and a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions -- is especially destructive, the report shows. All but seven percent of major marine fish stocks are in decline or exploited to the limit of sustainability. Since 1990, Earth has lost 2.9 million hectares -- an area more than eight times the size of Germany or Vietnam -- of forests that play a critical role in absorbing record-level CO2 emissions. Read more