The World Wildlife Fund today published its latest Living Planet Report – with human food consumption playing a big part in the organisation’s biennial review of the state of the planet.
This year’s report found that the human population’s vast and growing consumption of food and resources has played a heavy hand in wiping out 60 per cent of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970.
Among the 59 scientists from across the globe contributing to the 2018 Living Planet Report was N8 AgriFood researcher Chris West, pictured below.
Chris is N8 AgriFood’s Theme Two contact at the University of York, and worked with fellow researchers from the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Simon Croft and Jonathan Green, to contribute a section on utilising cutting edge data and methods to link consumers to their impacts, with a specific focus on biodiversity loss.
Simon said: “In the three-page section, titled “Integrating data to connect consumers to their impacts”, we look at how innovative research is weaving together data from very different sources to illuminate the dynamics and interdependencies of production-to-consumption systems.”
Chris, Simon and Jonathan were invited to were invited to submit their work after previously contributing to the 2016 Living Planet Report, when they produced a short section pertaining to their work on linking sub-national production and impacts through to consumption, with all three becoming members of the WWF Living Planet research group.
This year’s piece pulled together research they have been engaged with in recent years across a number of projects. Simon said: “It reflects how we are moving towards broader and more holistic assessments of the issues related to our consumption-driven impacts.
“This is shifting away from looking at individual components towards a more systems perspective, understanding how different actors along the supply chain contribute to, and can be engaged with to mitigate against, the damage that our consumption is driving.”
Click HERE to read the full Living Planet Report 2018.