Driven by the Global Capitalist Economy, an Era of 'Biological Annihilation' Has Arrived

According to the first global analysis of its kind, animal populations and biodiversity are precipitously declining in a mass extinction crisis far more severe than previously thought. The continuation of current trends, according to researchers, raise the possibility that three-quarters of all species may disappear in coming centuries in a mass extinction event, the sixth of its kind the planet has experienced.

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Such a massive-scale catastrophe hasn't been seen since three-quarters of life on Earth, including the non-avian dinosaurs, were wiped out 66 million years ago by a giant meteor impact. As much as half of the number of animals that once shared our planet are no longer here, a loss the authors described as “a massive erosion of the greatest biological diversity in the history of Earth.”

“This is the case of a biological annihilation occurring globally,” said Stanford Professor Rodolfo Dirzo, co-author of the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Within only 25 years – from 1990 to 2015 – 27,600 species of animals have dwindled in range and population, including 177 types of mammals.

The main drivers of wildlife decline are pollution, disease, habitat loss, overconsumption and invasive species. 

Each of these factors is exacerbated, if not driven, by human activities centered around a global economic system that treats nature – water, land, air, food, and energy resources – as inputs for private production and profit accumulation. The toxic byproducts from the widespread use of hydrocarbons, heavy metals, rare earth minerals and agro-industrial chemicals are typically a burden borne by the public sphere, impacting humans lacking land rights and animal populations alike.

Likewise, climatic conditions on the planet have severely impacted tropical regions, which have witnessed the highest numbers of declining species. Deforestation for agriculture purposes has led to a situation where 37% of the Earth's land surface is used for farmland and pasture, according to the World Bank, while land degradation has fueled the desertification of vast areas in once-biodiverse regions across the globe.

Forty percent of mammals are surviving on 20 percent or less of the land they once roamed, while 30 percent of the planet's vertebrates are declining in both range and population – with about two species with a backbone simply disappearing annually. In recent years biodiversity as a whole has rapidly decreased, the study found.

“Several species of mammals that were relatively safe one or two decades ago are now endangered,” including cheetahs, lions and giraffes, it said.

The study underscores the dangers posed by the crisis-ridden global capitalist system, which is mired in distributional conflicts, poor or insufficient environmental management measures, and other political-economic factors that ensure a continuation of ecological devastation and “biological annihilation” in the near future.