Earth might lose more than tenth of its species by the end of the 21st century, according to new research presented during the UN Biodiversity Conference. Roughly 3,000 scientists have called for action from governments in order to reverse the worrying trend.
Researchers have built a simulation model of an artificial Earth on a supercomputer, populating the virtual world with synthetic species and modeling the effect of global warming and land use.
“We have populated a virtual world from the ground up and mapped the resulting fate of thousands of species across the globe to determine the likelihood of real-world tipping points,” says Dr. Giovanni Strona from the University of Helsinki.
As simulation showed, in the worst case scenario 27% of species will die out. In a moderate scenario roughly 13% of animals and plants will go extinct.
Scientists point out that study is unique because it takes into account secondary effects on biodiversity, when the extinction of one species leads to the extinction of another.
“Think of a predatory species that loses its prey to climate change. The loss of the prey species is a ‘primary extinction’ because it succumbed directly to a disturbance. But with nothing to eat, its predator will also go extinct (a co-extinction). Or, imagine a parasite losing its host to deforestation, or a flowering plant losing its pollinators because it becomes too warm. Every species depends on others in some way,” stated Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia.
Roughly 3,000 scientists have signed an open letter to governments calling to tackle overconsumption of the Earth resources. The document especially targets the overconsumption of wealthy nations that impose costs of nature recovery on developing countries, where nature mostly remains untouched. Scientists stress that wealthy nations are to be blamed for climate change.