On October 21, representatives of countries around the world will gather for the United Nations World Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, to explain how they plan to implement the commitment to halt the erosion of biodiversity by 2030, made two years ago at COP15 in Canada.

On the eve of this, the latest edition of the Living Planet report, published on Thursday, October 10 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), outlines that – despite such promises – the health of the planet's animal species and ecosystems is continuing to deteriorate.

This annual update of the Living Planet Index (LPI) assesses the abundance of wild vertebrate populations. It indicates that between 1970 and 2020 the population size of monitored birds, mammals, amphibians, fish and reptiles declined, on average, by 73% on a global scale. The previous edition, published in 2022, reported a drop of 69%.

"This flagship WWF report reveals the extent of the decline in biodiversity and confirms the trend of previous editions," stressed Véronique Andrieux, director general of the NGO's French branch. "Behind each species, environments and ecosystems are affected."

Calculated by the Zoological Society of London, the LPI takes into account a data set that grows from edition to edition: this year, information on some 35, 000 populations of 5,495 animal species was considered. Vertebrates represent less than 5% of known animal species, but are the most studied. This indicator, often misunderstood, does not say that almost three-quarters of wild vertebrate species have disappeared in half a century, nor that all the populations studied are declining (many are increasing or stable), but it does indicate that the average size of populations has fallen considerably.

"A population is a group of animals observed at a given time in a given place," explained Yann Laurans, director of programs at WWF France. "The LPI is open to criticism insofar as it gives a global average, but no study credibly states that there has been an increase in abundance. There have been some real successes at local level, with species making a comeback, but these remain islands of preservation within a deteriorating whole."

The population of pink dolphins in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, has declined by 65% in 22 years, with individual animals being caught in fishing nets or hunted for bait, while the population of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Massif (Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda) grew by 3% per year between 2010 and 2016, thanks to conservation efforts. Populations of Antarctic chinstrap penguin colonies declined by 61% between 1980 and 2019, due to a shortage of krill (zooplankton) and climate change, while European bison, extinct in the wild at the beginning of the 20th century, have made a comeback on the continent.

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