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More Than 75 Percent of Earth's Land Areas Are 'Broken,' Major Report Finds (vice.com)
Like a broken cell phone that can only text or take pictures, but not make a single call, more than 75 percent of the Earth's land areas have lost some or most of their functions, undermining the well-being of the 3.2 billion people that rely on them to produce food crops, provide clean water, control flooding and more. From a report: These once-productive lands have either become deserts, are polluted, or have been deforested and converted for unsustainable agricultural production. This is a major contributor to increased conflict and mass human migration, and left unchecked, could force as many as 700 million to migrate by 2050, according to the world's first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation, released today in MedellÃn, Colombia.
Land degradation -- including deforestation, soil erosion, and salinity and pollution of fresh water systems -- is also driving species to extinction and aggravating the effects of climate change, the report concludes. It was written by more than 100 leading experts from 45 countries for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES is the 'IPCC for biodiversity,' a scientific assessment of the status of non-human life that makes up the Earth's life support system.
Land degradation -- including deforestation, soil erosion, and salinity and pollution of fresh water systems -- is also driving species to extinction and aggravating the effects of climate change, the report concludes. It was written by more than 100 leading experts from 45 countries for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES is the 'IPCC for biodiversity,' a scientific assessment of the status of non-human life that makes up the Earth's life support system.
Can we please stop saying that anything that has any type of problem is "broken?"
There is no way you can really claim 75% of the Earth's land mass is "broken". That is insane, it would imply the world was starving and farms everywhere were no longer viable.
I'm imagining they reached this conclusion after declaring any bit of land they could find a candy wrapper or wandering plastic bag as "polluted".
But then it is the "IPCC for biodiversity", so that really says it all as far as how much stock you can place in the report.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...this wouldn't be a problem.
Poor people breed way too much. Give them free birth control, paid for by tax money from wealthy nations. The total costs will be hugely less than what we are spending to deal with the mess they are making.
It's the end of the world yet again?
As someone that flies over the US on a regular basis, you can literally look out of the window and see that this is untrue.
To make 75% even remotely true, it means that most places are completely corrupted and ruined. Outside of major cities, which certainly have destroyed their land -- but which account for a few thousand square miles -- most land is not that way.
Had they gone for a lower number, even as "low" as 50%, I wouldn't blindly assume that they're just making it up, but as it is 75%, then I assume that they are.
This type of fear-mongering is not helping anyone out. Too much wolf crying, and people won't believe, nor care, when something that actually has an impact is happening. Had we had this much noise back in the '80s, nobody would have bothered banning CFCs, just because people would consider the ozone hole as something that was something impossible to do anything about.
It does seem highly unlikely, considering the large percentage of the Earth's surface that is largely unused and unpopulated in Siberia, Alaska and Canada. At the very least the article is poorly written, likely leaving out a lot of information that describes exactly what they mean.
> "The UN-backed report underscores the urgent need for consumers, companies and governments to rein in excessive consumption – particularly of beef – and for farmers to draw back from conversions of forests and wetlands, according to the authors."
Land degradation threatens human wellbeing, major report warns
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/26/land-degradation-is-undermining-human-wellbeing-un-report-warns
The summary wrings its hands that ruined land can't feed people, and then says that clearing forests for agriculture ruins the land.
Like a broken cell phone that can only text or take pictures, but not make a single call, more than 75 percent of the Earth's land areas have lost some or most of their functions, undermining the well-being of the 3.2 billion people that rely on them to produce food crops, provide clean water, control flooding and more.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's not like a broken car, then it doesn't matter.
Japan, and much of Europe is already pretty much not having babies enough to replace the aging population - that is a large part of why some countries there are attempting to accept a lot of refugees.
The more advanced a country is, the more population growth declines, and eventually becomes negative. Breeding and overpopulation is the LAST thing you should be worried about. Worry quite a lot more about what happens when most economies are dependent on a larger base of young people to support an aging population, and those young people do not show up... If you think restless youth are bad just try angry elderly .
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The prophets have spoken. The Earth demands offerings of cash and penitent monastic lifestyles. Repent sinners!
Wow, none of you actually read the underlying report.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, common sense says this is bollocks.
This https://www.umweltbundesamt.de... is a picture about the usage of area in Germany. Germany is a very densely populated country.
Blue is water, yellow is mining etc. in between settlements and traffic/streets/rails.
Dark green, about 30% woods. 50% light green is agriculture. Those two numbers are misleading as a wood has pretty special restrictions to be counted as a wood. So I would estimate it is more likely 40% woods and 40% agriculture, by a layman definition.
While we worldwide have erosion problems, e.g. in 3rd world countries like the central USA, and we have deforestation especially in south america and salt accumulation on fields especially in Africa, it is not really plausible that 75% of the landmass should be "damaged".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They surveyed the land in third world shitholes and wrote off any that was covered in little piles of poop.
It's clear on the face of it that the underlying report can'tr possible support the headline/summary of the report.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Many of the denial posts here seem to come from people who may think that a manicured and weed free lawn is 'natural'.
Like a broken cell phone that can only text or take pictures, but not make a single call, ...
You can make phone calls with a cell phone? And... talk... to people...?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What, you thought we weren't being attacked?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I hear that new land is appearing in the North and South Poles of the globe...
Of course not, because if they did that they might actually learn something.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
They surveyed the land in third world shitholes and wrote off any that was covered in little piles of poop.
So America? And specifically 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The White House is buried in big piles of poop, and is infested with cockroaches.
Very broken.
Its worse than that.
They are classifying ANYTHING as broken.
They classify natural deserts as broken.
They classify natural mountains as broken
They classify ALL human farming (no matter how productive for how long) as broken.
As far as I can tell, its pretty much only natural untouched forests and jungle they consider to be not broken.
Interesting worldview, that..
Someone got a bit caught up in trying to rationalise a stupid-high number.
Which is why the comparison with the IPCC is rather appropriate. In both cases there’s a scientific study with bad (or even alarming) news, but a title and summary that aren’t supported by the study’s content, and are nothing short of politically motivated sensationalism. I just don’t get why true environmentalists would hurt their cause in this way by allowing such sensationalism to cast doubt on such studies... because the conclusions actually supported by the data are dire enough.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The article says that 75% of the land has lost at least one of its functions.
No, the report doesn't even say that. It says...
Less than 25% of the Earth’s land surface has escaped substantial impacts of human activity.
The metric they are using is biodiversity and the assessment technique they are using estimates that most of the forcing function for a reduction in bio-diversity is human related climate change since the beginning of human existance (not actually direct human intervention) which is how they can presume impact for areas where humans have never visited (and get to 75%-90%)....
Consequently, if your metric is not biodiversity, or if your threshold is not "escaped substantial impact" since the beginning of human existence due to climate change or direct intervention, your mileage may vary...
The actual report states "land degradation now critical". Nowhere in the actual report does it use the term "broken". The writer at MOTHERBOARD.COM, Stephen Leahy used the word "broken" in his headline. Nor is there any asinine comparison to 3.2 billion people to cell phone use in the report.
https://www.ipbes.net/news/med...
nothing short of politically motivated sensationalism
No, you're making this political. The sensationalism is about getting clicks and money, not about politics.
That got flushed out in February of last year.
Here's a hint for a happier life: Don't read anything where the summary screams "bullshit".
Why would I bother to read anything based on an obvious lie like "75% of land is broken".
Now if someone somewhere wrote a better summary that actually made some sense, then I might be tempted to read the report. But as things stand I can be pretty sure (A) that will not happen and (B) the original report is very likely a complete waste of time (mine and theirs).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>I'm imagining...
RTFA.
Then you won't need to attack the thing you think it might have said.
What's on /. is a dumbing down of a badly written webpage that fails at the science writer's task of communicating reports and findings to the public.
It'll take you five clicks. Not hard.
Neither 75% nor "broken" appears in the media release
It says
"Media Release: Worsening Worldwide Land Degradation Now ‘Critical’, Undermining Well-Being of 3.2 Billion People"
"Less than 25% of the Earth’s land surface has escaped substantial impacts of human activity – and by 2050, the IPBES experts estimate this will have fallen to less than 10%"
That's not remotely the same as what the Slashdot headline says
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Fucking moron.
Why can't it be about both? There's nothing more satisfying than padding your wallet and ego simultaneously.
Knowledge Brings Fear
The study is bullshit because it relies on the assumption that land ever had a Purpose or Intended Function. It didn't. Thus, it cannot be broken.
If the underlying report is so different than the summary, then why did the summary get up-voted and on the /. home page? Because if the underlying report isn't so sensational, then no one will care, and thus no eyes drawn. So I guess it's the fault of those who read the summary and say "no freaking way that report can even be close to correct" and forgo the entire thing, rather than those who completely twisted and misrepresented the report. Or, you know, you could provide a quick sentence about WHY the summary was wrong...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The real problem is that current researchers do not look at many things that predate the WWW, so time started ca. 1987. (If they are really motivated, they may find some black and white photos from the 30's.) What these stupid lazy screwups don't realize is that in the 4.5+ billion years that the Earth has been around the land areas have "broken" many times over.
The Great Oxygen Event changed much of the exposed land areas. Just think of the devastation that occurred to the algae-covered rocky areas when plants first came on the scene! And then came the dirty animals that messed up those ecosystems.
These researchers are a bunch of whinny ass hats. The one thing that hasn't changed is that the Earth's environment is always changing.
Western white males... they did this to the planet, so they should pay for it and fix it. It can't be the billions of Asians and Africans.
And how much was gained???
When I was young I read a book about a chicken. His name was Chicken Little. He too predicted the end of the earth because the sky is falling.
Kill all the humans. They are the cause of everything.
And front row seats what are the odds of that. Grab the popcorn, itll be a great show.
[($)]
All the FISH.... :)
[($)]
wouldn't we then be a virus?
[($)]
I'm imagining they reached this conclusion
In this case "they" means Motherboard. IPBES reached no such conclusion.
No they haven't, because the freakin' thing hasn't been released yet (source, about halfway down). All that's come out is a media release summary. If you put out a media release without the accompanying scientific report to support it, it's probably bullshit you don't want people to be able to call you out on.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Seems like a fair estimate to me. I grew up in a farming area - a good fraction of which was basically unusable thanks to salination and/or erosion. Same was true all over the state. Grew up and moved to the city - which was not-so gradually spreading like a malign growth over the farming land that used to surround it. I holiday in mountains where whole hillsides sometimes slip thanks to clear-felling, swim on reefs that are clotted with plastic and half dead thanks to rising sea temperatures, and can't grow veges in my own backyard thanks to residual pollution.
A fine job we're doing...
Those few acres of trees were the wind break for his whole farm. Now we can watch the wind blow away all his topsoil. Not to worry dumping more fertilizer will solve it.
The farmer did lose function and now his whole farm is less sustainable and productive.
Will be self correcting.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
But the point is, do you think other economies/countries/people should be more like you? What happens when other developing countries catch up? Or are you planning on keeping them down? If the rest of the world becomes like you, what do you think will happen?
But then it is the "IPCC for biodiversity", so that really says it all as far as how much stock you can place in the report.
That simply means they don't care about the actual arable land but consider the land area as a whole and use metrics that emphasize the disappearance of pre-existing food webs and changes of the ecosystems. A corn field, banana plantation, or any large scale modern (using the current methods) field is broken in this sense.
Seriously? We are deciding what functions a hunk of land should have and then declaring it "broken"? We have no real issues if we can sit around and worry about this.
If you put money here, these folks think you will feed 700 million people.
Be sure to double-check their data.
Oh I love the bias, you are marked troll, yet the instigating comment was not.
What TFS is saying is that 75% of all cars leak oil, have less than perfect emissions, or other problems up to and including sitting on blocks in somebodies front yard. What TFA apparently is really saying, is that 25% of all cars are sitting unused on new car lots.
Read the report? I'm not convinced that most of them read the summary, let alone the article or the report...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Oh dear! 75% of the land surface isn't actually arable, or even habitable. Humans must have ruined it!"
I note that people who make these broad proclamations *never* have any sense of the scale of the planet. They see a hobby farm and think that's all of agriculture.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I find it fascinating that there are so many posting here who find the situation that we are in as a species ...impossible...while comfortably writing with plenty of time to rant ...from whatever comfortable place you are in... .. ..one could use the context of a cellphone to explain it .. ..was left to sit fallow for 7 years to let the soil recover its nutrient value...at the most plant peas and the like to encourage the process... ..with tons of fertilizers running off the fields into the waterways... ..growing into even more issues.. ..and us. ...then there is pesticides doing the same thing....
I grew up a farm boy...I have some insight from that regard...
and I have traveled enough around the world...and not on the "package tours" away from the actual world...
and yes...definitely one could use the word "broken"
and yes
for those who have no real clue how ecosystems work...
And the "broken" areas aren't relegated only to the impoverished or war-torn areas of the planet.
It is happening in the 1st world countries as well.
It doesn't take much to ruin the land.
for example...it used to be that a field after a year of use
with the advent modern fertilizers and all the other pressure on farmers to produce for society yearly crop rotations with no rest for the land became standard
Now the issue isn't just one issue...it's two....and three
the land starts losing it's topsoil since it can't hold it anymore...the cream of the field is gone...
so more fertilizers are needed...the land itself is tired and may never come back after 50+ years of such abuse...and there are fertilizers now running into the waterways and the surrounding ecosystems contaminating drinking water, ponds , streams, marshes, forests, wildlife
and that is just farmland fertilizers
When we have 1% of the population expecting to feed the rest...and not given adequate funds or ability to do so..this is what happens ..just at this level..to the land.
As far as turning more forests and wild places into farmland...
it isn't needed...it is simply convenient...and the imbalance grows across the ecosystems..
then there are the corporate polluters....adding to the problem..
and the city dwellers driving to the country and dumping their garbage out of their cars...
thinking the problems just disappear with their garbage in the rear view mirror...
As far as conflicts go being a perpetrator... ...conflict spreads as the lack of basics mount... ...if they cannot get it...or if they fear they cannot get it.
Simply
People will take food
the problems of the land increasingly unable to support us , ...
have been building for a long long time...
with many along the way warning us all...
This isn't a new issue
And of course there will be those who scoff from the comfort of their seemingly inviolable parents basements or their removed loft apartments ...
that the problems don't exist..
or that the problem is relegated to a place removed from impacting them..
or that the problem is the devising of another or others and that they have no hand in it themselves..
I am amazed at the stupidity I found in many responses here from what seemed initially to be intelligent people...
Enjoy the comfort of where you live...while you can...
No need to get out of your comfy chairs..
the conflict for safe food and clean water is coming right to you..
The human race is on an exponential curve. We're on the fast rising part of that curve. What curve? The extinction curve. The downside? We'll soon be extinct. The upside? We're so close to the limit that we can observe the end of the earth (appeals to some scientific types that like to observe such things as if it were an experiment).
Kill all humans.
Ask him: If you fell off the edge of a flat Earth, to where do you fall? Ask him: If i fly a plane East in a straight line, will i be lost forever when i fly off the edge of the Earth, or will i eventually return right where i started, but from the West? Ask him: Are other planets flat? Like the moon, for example? Ask him: Why doesn't the ocean spill off? Ask him: What's underneath, on the other flat side? i'd love to hear his responses...
OOPS. Posted on the wrong story :-) ...Slashdot doesn't let us edit or delete. "It's in our backyard... it's in our front yard. Pollution and contamination are shortening all life. We're going to have to unite as a people and say 'no more'! We, the people, are going to have to put our thoughts together to save our planet here. We only have one water... one air... one Mother Earth." - Corbin Harney
âoeWeâ(TM)re so self-important. Everybodyâ(TM)s going to save something now. âoeSave the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.â And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we donâ(TM)t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. Iâ(TM)m tired of this shit. Iâ(TM)m tired of f-ing Earth Day. Iâ(TM)m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there arenâ(TM)t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists donâ(TM)t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they donâ(TM)t. You know what theyâ(TM)re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. Theyâ(TM)re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesnâ(TM)t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ⦠hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ⦠And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isnâ(TM)t going anywhere. WE are!
Weâ(TM)re going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weâ(TM)re going away. And we wonâ(TM)t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ⦠The planetâ(TM)ll be here and weâ(TM)ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planetâ(TM)ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after weâ(TM)re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, â(TM)cause thatâ(TM)s what it does. Itâ(TM)s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if itâ(TM)s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesnâ(TM)t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didnâ(TM)t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, âoeWhy are we here?â
Plastic⦠asshole.âoe