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The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a major assessment of the human impact on the environment, called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000, launched in 2001 and published in 2005 with more than $14 million of grants. It popularized the term ecosystem services, the benefits gained by humans from ecosystems.
The Report examined the rate of decline in biodiversity and found that the adverse effects of human activities on the world's species is "unprecedented in human history": [14] one million species, including 40 percent of amphibians, almost a third of reef-building corals, more than a third of marine mammals, and 10 percent of all insects are ...
The GLOBIO global biodiversity model is a model developed by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency to support policy makers by quantifying global human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems. [1] [2] [3] It is designed to quantify human impacts on biodiversity at large (regional to global) scales. [4]
Red list categories of the IUCN Demonstrator against biodiversity loss, at Extinction Rebellion (2018).. The current rate of global biodiversity loss is estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than the (naturally occurring) background extinction rate, faster than at any other time in human history, [25] [26] and is expected to grow in the upcoming years.
Human impact on the environment (or anthropogenic environmental impact) refers to changes to biophysical environments [14] and to ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources [15] caused directly or indirectly by humans.
The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report concluded that over the last three decades human-induced warming had likely had an influence on many biological systems. [25] [26] [27] The Sixth Assessment Report found that half of all species with long-term data had shifted their ranges poleward (or upward for mountain species).
The loss of biodiversity may not directly affect humans, but the indirect effects of losing many species as well as the diversity of ecosystems in general are enormous. When biodiversity is lost, the environment loses many species that perform valuable and unique roles in the ecosystem.
Human impact on the environment. From top left, clockwise: satellite image of Southeast Asian haze; IAEA experts investigate the Fukushima disaster; a seabird during an oil spill; depiction of deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic forest by Portuguese settlers, c. 1820 –25; acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto; industrial fishing in 1997, a practice that has led to overfishing.