Human pressure on global land ecosystems and biodiversity increases notably from 1990-2020 - Development of a spatially explicit Biodiversity Pressure Index (BPI)

The loss of biodiversity from human activities on land is a widely-recognized, worldwide problem. Since the advent of the industrial revolution the loss of plant and animal species has increased dramatically, with 25% of species now at risk of extinction. Conventions and targets to protect biodiversity have been implemented, but with limited success. The Aichi targets for 2020, for example, were almost all missed, with worsening trends for 12 out of the 20 targets. One reason for this failure is the ineffective application of broad-scale measures that are not tailored to the underlying causes of biodiversity loss. Knowledge on the spatial and temporal distribution of anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity loss would therefore enable targeted interventions that address location-specific stressors and thus would be better-adapted measures to protect biodiversity.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified five main drivers of anthropogenic origin as the causes of biodiversity loss: land use, natural resource extraction, climate change, pollution, and invasive alien species. However, when seeking to quantify impacts on biodiversity, these drivers are still usually treated separately. We develop a Biodiversity Pressure Index (BPI) by quantifying and mapping data for nine indicators of the five drivers into a single, annually changing index with a spatial resolution of 0.1° at global scale covering the period 1990-2020.

We find that large areas (approximately 86%, including Antarctica, Greenland) are under major human pressure and that almost all areas have experienced an increase (about 96% of land) in pressure over the past thirty years. Industrialised regions had high pressure levels already in 1990 and continue to do so in 2020, whereas regions with rapid economic growth setting in after 2000 where low in pressure in 1990, but show high pressure levels today. Whilst areas impacted by human activities are increasing, areas of wilderness are decreasing to a point that in 2020, only 0.02% of the terrestrial land are entirely free from human influence. (Sub-) tropical wetlands and temperate grasslands are the biomes with the highest pressures today. And whilst land use is still one of the main factors, climate change - especially increasing temperature - is one of the major recent and future threats to biodiversity.