{"id":13270,"date":"2026-10-13T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.planetfanatics.hu\/?p=13270"},"modified":"2026-10-16T12:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T10:32:13","slug":"there-is-hope-despite-the-73-decline-the-2026-living-planet-report-has-been-published","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetfanatics.hu\/en\/news\/there-is-hope-despite-the-73-decline-the-2026-living-planet-report-has-been-published\/","title":{"rendered":"There is hope despite the -73% decline: the 2026 Living Planet Report has been published"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does 73% mean?<\/b><\/p>\n

The Living Planet Index (LPI)<\/a> monitors 35,803 populations across 5,790 vertebrate species and measures relative change rather than the absolute number of animals: the average annual decline is 2.5%, with confidence intervals ranging between -78% and -67%. The report itself stresses that this does not mean there are 73% fewer wild animals on Earth since 1970, nor does it mean that 73% of populations are declining. Roughly half of the monitored populations are stable or increasing; rather, the scale of the losses far outweighs the gains.<\/p>\n

The 2024 report reported 72.9%<\/a>. The current figure of 73.2% does not indicate that the decline has halted over the past two years. The index changed due to methodological reasons: 967 new populations and 295 new species were added to the database.<\/p>\n

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Living Planet Index<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

This figure varies considerably depending on habitat and region:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Area \/ Realm<\/strong><\/td>\nChange 1970\u20132022<\/strong><\/td>\nUncertainty range<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Marine<\/span><\/td>\n\u221259%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221269% \u2026 \u221245%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Terrestrial<\/span><\/td>\n\u221269%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221278% \u2026 \u221257%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Freshwater<\/span><\/td>\n\u221285%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221290% \u2026 \u221277%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Latin America and the Caribbean<\/span><\/td>\n\u221295%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221297% \u2026 \u221291%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Africa<\/span><\/td>\n\u221280%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221291% \u2026 \u221257%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Asia and the Pacific<\/span><\/td>\n\u221249%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221272% \u2026 \u22128%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
North America<\/span><\/td>\n\u221228%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221251% \u2026 +5%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Europe and Central Asia<\/span><\/td>\n\u221223%<\/span><\/td>\n\u221237% \u2026 \u22123%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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The story behind these differences is this: in North America and Europe, nature was already in a much worse state by 1970, which means the baseline was inherently lower and the curve is flatter. In Europe, many mammals and birds have recovered, but freshwater fish, amphibians, and reptiles continue to decline. In Latin America, the threats are manifold: the conversion of grasslands, forests, and wetlands, the damming of rivers, overexploitation, and, more acutely than in other regions, climate change and disease.<\/p>\n

The marine index is declining at the slowest pace, partly due to improved fisheries management. However, this average conceals the fact that sharks and rays are still in steep decline. The primary cause of terrestrial decline is habitat loss. Between 1990 and 2020, an estimated 420 million hectares of forest were lost to deforestation, driven mainly by conversion to agricultural land.<\/p>\n

The LPI is not the only metric, and the others point in the same direction. According to the Red List Index<\/a>, which is based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species extinction risk is rising; according to the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)<\/a>, the integrity of terrestrial ecosystems has dropped across every region since 1800; and researchers estimate the rate of extinctions to be at least a hundred times higher than the natural background rate prior to human impact.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter? According to the report, roughly half of global GDP\u2014approximately $58 trillion in 2023\u2014depends in some way on nature.<\/p>\n

When conservation works<\/b><\/p>\n

The report notes that conservation interventions have averted the extinction of an estimated 32 bird and 16 mammal species since 1993. While this touches individual species and localized populations, four large-scale stories stand out in particular.<\/p>\n

Tigers:<\/b> In 2010, around 3,200 wild tigers remained; by 2025, that number had reached roughly 5,700\u2014an increase of more than 70%, and the first documented trend reversal. This success is underpinned by protected areas, professional rangers, cross-border anti-poaching cooperation, and demand-reduction campaigns. The situation remains fragile: the tiger is still endangered and occupies less than 8% of its historic range.<\/p>\n

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Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna:<\/b> By 2010, the Atlantic stock had shrunk by 80%, while the Pacific stock had plummeted to just 2% of unfished levels. Following consumer campaigns, boycotts, commitments from chefs and retailers, quotas, size restrictions, the protection of spawning grounds, and dockside inspections, neither is considered overfished today, and neither qualifies as a threatened species.<\/p>\n

Green sea turtle:<\/b> In 2025, this became the first sea turtle species to be downlisted from Endangered to Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Behind this achievement lie 50 years of concerted effort across roughly 80 nesting nations: protecting nesting females and nests, implementing lighting regulations, equipping fishing nets with turtle excluder devices, and fostering community engagement. At regularly monitored sites, the number of clutches grew from around 419,000 in 2011 to approximately 526,000 in 2024. Certain subpopulations remain threatened, however, and climate change continues to place pressure on nesting beaches.<\/p>\n

South African elephants:<\/b> While the African savanna elephant population is generally in decline and endangered overall, numbers are increasing in parts of South Africa. The report attributes this difference to governance: the legal framework there entrusts elephant management to local communities, allowing them to directly benefit from sustainable stewardship. Yet success comes with a price: high densities trigger human-wildlife conflicts and habitat degradation.<\/p>\n

Smaller, localized examples abound as well. The sea otter was pushed to near extinction by the fur trade in the late 19th century, but through legal protection and reintroductions, it has reclaimed parts of its former range. On Indonesia\u2019s Masakambing Island, a village ordinance banned the capture and transport of yellow-crested cockatoos, and the population doubled in 10 years. In Mexico, after wild goats and feral cats were removed from Guadalupe Island, the Laysan albatross population surged by 454% between 2014 and 2019.<\/p>\n

The takeaway across all these cases is identical: people took action without knowing whether it would yield results. At the same time, isolated interventions are not enough: an individual species or area can be saved, but the overarching trend can only be reversed by transforming the systems driving the decline.<\/p>\n

Hope is not the same as optimism<\/b><\/p>\n

The central premise of the report is that hope is not a mood, but a process. It is not identical to optimism\u2014that is, the expectation that the future will inevitably turn out well. Research shows that optimistic messaging actually dampens the willingness to act because people underestimate the risks. Nor is hope equivalent to false hope, which disregards facts and surfaces when an avenue has closed. Genuine hope is grounded in evidence, candid about what works and what does not, and prepared to shift course.<\/p>\n

Psychology distinguishes three core components:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Goal:<\/b> founded on something a person wants to protect, rather than merely avoid.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Pathways:<\/b> credible routes to reaching that goal, even if they must be modified along the way.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Agency:<\/b> the conviction that one’s own actions can make a difference.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The report highlights resilience<\/b> as a fourth element: the capacity to press on even when progress stalls. Data alone does not spur people into action. Where concern runs high but perceived agency is low, the typical response is withdrawal, denial, or paralysis.<\/p>\n

    Hope is a shared endeavor. The hope that drives conservation outcomes is rarely individual alone; it belongs to groups, communities, coalitions, and institutions. The report distinguishes between three forms of agency: individual (e.g., lifestyle, consumption choices), collective (a group\u2019s shared belief in its ability to achieve an objective), and proxy agency, where action is delegated to others (such as donating to an organization or electing representatives committed to reform). While the most vital conservation milestones demand all three, the true engine of transformation is collective agency.<\/p>\n

    For example, a movement by the Waorani community safeguarded 200,000 hectares of Amazonian rainforest from oil extraction. In September 2019, the global youth climate movement mobilized roughly 6 million people across 125 countries in just a single week. In 2018, Ecuador\u2019s A\u2019i Cof\u00e1n community secured a constitutional ruling that revoked 52 gold mining concessions on their ancestral lands.<\/p>\n

    Hope is not equally accessible to all. Those marginalized by poverty, racial or gender discrimination, disability, displacement, or the historical dispossession of Indigenous peoples are often excluded from decision-making, leaving them with far less room to act. According to the report, low agency in such contexts is not a personal failure, but a realistic assessment of circumstance. Conversely, where disadvantaged groups are granted rights, formal recognition, and a genuine role in governance, both human well-being and biodiversity outcomes improve.<\/p>\n

    The greatest adversaries<\/b><\/p>\n

    These success stories are real, yet they stand against far larger countervailing forces. Drawing on IPBES data, the report traces the causal chain: finance shapes industries, industries produce direct drivers, and those drivers dictate the scale of biodiversity loss. Among the direct drivers, habitat loss (30%), overexploitation (23%), and climate change (14%) together account for 67% of biodiversity loss.<\/p>\n

    Energy:<\/b> The combustion of coal, oil, and fossil gas accounts for roughly three-quarters of emitted greenhouse gases, and climate change now drives biodiversity decline across every biome. The report counters fossil dependency with both a climate argument and a security argument: the 50-year arc running from the 1973\u20131974 oil embargo to the 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates that fossil reliance undermines both energy security and macroeconomic stability.<\/p>\n

    Food:<\/b> The global food system represents the single largest cause of habitat loss, contributes roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, and is responsible for pushing humanity past seven of the nine planetary boundaries.<\/p>\n

    Humanity farms 4.8 billion hectares\u2014covering 37% of the Earth’s land surface\u2014and the report emphasizes that meeting future food requirements does not require any additional land.<\/p>\n

    Yet the current system fails to nourish people properly: 673 million individuals remain undernourished, over one billion suffer from obesity, and less than 1% of the global population eats within planetary boundaries and nutritional needs simultaneously. The hidden environmental and public health costs are estimated to exceed $10 trillion annually, representing approximately 12% of global GDP.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Finance:<\/b> According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), $7.3 trillion flowed into activities harmful to nature in 2023. Of this, $4.9 trillion came from the private sector. In the same year, a mere $220 billion was directed toward nature-based solutions\u2014the vast majority of which came from public funds. The report stresses that this is not out of malice, but rather the consequence of prevailing incentives: greenhouse gas emissions have been free, as has the destruction of biodiversity.<\/p>\n

    Conservation alone cannot reverse what these three systems produce. Yet the very same hope that fueled the recovery of tigers and bluefin tuna can be directed at the systems themselves.<\/p>\n

    Positive tipping points<\/b><\/p>\n

    Complex systems do not always change linearly. Pressure accumulates over years, but once a threshold is crossed, change accelerates as feedback loops become self-reinforcing. While we often hear about negative tipping points (the die-off of coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest losing its function as a carbon sink), the exact same dynamic can operate in a positive direction. A positive tipping point occurs where a system shifts into a healthier state, making subsequent change faster, cheaper, and harder to reverse.<\/p>\n

    The process can be divided into three phases:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. \n

      Enabling phase:<\/b> testing ideas, establishing rules, and building coalitions; slow growth that can take years or even decades depending on the system.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

    2. \n

      Accelerating phase:<\/b> reinforcing feedbacks overpower opposing forces, and the new rapidly displaces the old.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

    3. \n

      Stabilizing phase:<\/b> the pace of change slows; the new system becomes resilient.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Reinforcing feedbacks include social contagion and social norm adherence (if someone installs solar panels on their roof, the neighbors follow), economies of scale, and learning-by-doing. Due to the latter, the cost of batteries has plummeted by 99% over the past 30 years. On the opposing side stand lock-in effects (infrastructure, entrenched habits), lobbying, and fossil fuel subsidies.<\/p>\n

      Energy in the accelerating phase<\/b><\/p>\n

      According to the report, the global energy system has already crossed its tipping point and is now in the accelerating phase. Solar photovoltaic energy has become the cheapest source of new electricity in most countries: the levelized cost of utility-scale solar farms averages $38\u2013$78\/MWh, compared to $48\u2013$109\/MWh for fossil gas. Solar power generation is doubling every three years, and 2025 marked the first time that the expansion of clean energy met the entirety of new electricity demand.<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      Solar energy production is doubling every three years<\/b><\/p>\n

      Change in transport is moving at a similar pace: in 2024, more than 25% of new cars sold were electric; in Norway, they accounted for 96% of new cars in 2025; and in China, the share reached 50% in July 2024. Globally, approximately 58 million electric vehicles displace around 1.8 million barrels of oil consumption per day. In many cases, developing countries are transitioning faster than the EU or the US: in 2024, Pakistan imported 17 GW of solar panels\u2014double the volume of the previous year\u2014primarily for residential and small-scale distributed systems.<\/p>\n

      The phase-out of fossil fuels is still in its early stages, yet in 2024, solar and wind power generated roughly 14% of global electricity (up from below 5% in 2015), and the share of fossil fuels in the power mix fell below 60% for the first time since the 1940s.<\/p>\n

      The United Kingdom completely phased out coal-fired power generation in 2024, and 27 of the 38 OECD countries have committed to ending unabated coal power by 2030.<\/p>\n

      At the same time, the report notes that the transition is still not fast enough to avert dangerous climate change, and the global energy system is estimated to be in the accelerating phase. The road has not been, nor will it be, smooth. According to the report, every stage of the transition has triggered pushback from incumbent industries whose dominance it threatens. In recent years, this resistance has intensified in certain regions, which the report interprets as a signal that the shift is now disruptive enough to truly matter.<\/p>\n

      Food: Still in the enabling phase<\/b><\/p>\n

      According to the report, the transformation of the food system remains in the enabling phase on both the supply side (production) and the demand side (diets), and not a single country has yet reached the tipping point. The system could be tipped by three mutually reinforcing elements: nature-positive production, healthy and sustainable diets, and the reduction of food loss and waste\u2014the latter playing a complementary role. All three can be catalyzed in tandem by policy, finance, and market forces.<\/p>\n

      The single largest impediment is the current subsidy regime: governments spend approximately $540 billion annually on agricultural producer support, of which $470 billion (87%) distorts prices or is environmentally harmful. The report identifies subsidy reform as the single most impactful lever available: redirecting a portion of that $470 billion toward nature-positive practices, healthy dietary patterns, and supporting farmers through the transition.<\/p>\n

      Progress is evident where pressure is strong:<\/p>\n