Biodiversity and planetary boundaries face critical crisis

Human activity is driving unprecedented rates of plant and animal extinction, threatening global food security, water supplies, and medical development. According to Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), pressures from intensive agriculture, fossil fuel combustion, and pollution have caused vertebrate populations to decline by an average of 73 percent over the last 52 years, with freshwater ecosystems seeing an 85 percent drop.

Recent scientific findings, including the Planetary Health Check 2026 coordinated by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), indicate that humanity has profoundly altered Earth’s life-support systems. The report warns that seven of the nine ‘planetary boundaries’—thresholds defining a safe operating space for society—have been transgressed. Key areas of concern include climate change, which has exceeded safe greenhouse gas concentration limits, and biosphere integrity, which measures biodiversity loss.

As approximately 200 countries gather in Yerevan, Armenia, for the UN biodiversity summit (COP17), the goal is to halt nature loss by 2030. The crisis has direct implications for agriculture, as over 75 percent of food crops rely on pollinators such as bees and bats. Furthermore, the degradation of ecosystems and climate-linked extreme weather events continue to threaten global food supplies and the natural foundations of medicine.