70% decline in wildlife populations since 1970
WWF's Living Planet Report 2022 found an average 69 percent decline in monitored vertebrate population sizes between 1970 and 2018, with freshwater populations down 83 percent. The 2024 edition, covering through 2020, put the average decline at 73 percent.
The figure comes from WWF's Living Planet Report 2022, whose Living Planet Index (compiled by the Zoological Society of London from almost 32,000 monitored populations of 5,230 vertebrate species) showed an average 69% decline in population size between 1970 and 2018, with freshwater populations down 83% and Latin America and the Caribbean down 94%. The 2024 edition, covering 1970 to 2020, put the average at 73%. The index measures the average proportional change in monitored population sizes, not the number of animals or species lost.
Cited among the scale of destruction offered as evidence for the Capitalocene framework: "driving an average decline of nearly 70% in wildlife populations since just 1970".
More information
Related in Community
Entries this one is tied to through the book.
Examples
- Investments of 125 billionaires vs. France · both placed under Capitalocene
- 50,000 large dams · both placed under Capitalocene
- Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism · both placed under Capitalocene
- Carbon inequality: richest 1% vs. poorest two-thirds · both placed under Capitalocene
- Conquest of the Americas · both placed under Capitalocene
- Climate already warmed by over a degree Celsius · both placed under Capitalocene
- Subsistence farmer in the Global South · discussed together in section 007
In the framework
- Capitalocene · concept
In the book
- Chapter 1, section 007 · Confronting the Anthropocene and Assuming the Capitalocene
Mentioned in
Examples