Is life getting better or worse for the earth’s animals and plants? It’s the proverbial $64,000 question – though the substance of the matter is, naturally, of infinite value.

The answer depends on where you start along man’s long and tumultuous history with his environment.

If, for example, you started with the United Nations’ 2010 Global Biodiversity Outlook, you might be inclined to pessimism. The report concluded that targets set in 2002 to reduce biodiversity loss were not met; that the forces contributing to those losses were – in some cases - intensifying rather than diminishing. UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon warned of severe consequences from this “collective failure”, and spoke of “tipping points” beyond which global ecosystems would be subject to catastrophic damage 1.

Fast forward four years and the Outlook had slightly improved. Mr Ki-moon this time spoke of increasing awareness and congratulated nations for making “great strides” toward the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets established in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 2. But the report noted lukewarm or negligible progress on most initiatives – and some even went backwards. The Red List of threatened species continued to grow, and there was “no sign overall of reduced risk of extinction across groups of species”. Of 53 indicators, just five were “on track” to meet or exceed the target, while 33 were proceeding at “an insufficient rate”, 10 made no significant progress and five were “moving away” from the target 3.

But if you were to backtrack several decades, the bigger picture might seem rosier. For one thing, the alarmism that characterised scientific thinking on biodiversity in the 1970s proved to be unfounded. The Global 2000 Report to the [US] President , published in 1980, suggested that 15-20 per cent of all species on earth (potentially two million species) could die out by the turn of the millennium. In the end, just nine birds or mammals were known to have become extinct during that period 4.

That is not to promote complacency or to suggest things have gone swimmingly in the interceding years. Broadly, the story of global attitudes to biodiversity over the past 50 years is one of good intentions but poor results. Governments have changed their behaviour and priorities, particularly the advanced economies, while populations have become more environmentally conscious and attuned to the stark realities of habitat loss and extinction.

In 1980, whales were legally harpooned for food and the African elephant ivory trade flourished. Two years later, the International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling, and by the decade’s end, the ivory trade was effectively banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora 5.

On both counts, problems persist. Japan has continued to hunt whales under the guise of scientific research, while the Humane Society Internationale estimates 100 African elephants are killed each day for their tusks. However, there are also signs that instruments of both law and commerce are being used to curb practises which hurt biodiversity.

The International Court of Justice last year ordered Japan to cease whaling in the Antarctic, upholding Australia’s claim that the program did not fall within the scope permitted by global agreements. And this year, major American airlines refused to allow hunting trophies in their cargo holds, joining other international carriers such as Emirates, Air France, British Airways and Qantas 6. It followed an international outcry over the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe.

Of course, explicit human activities that kill endangered species are a hot-button issue but the thin end of the wedge. The five major pressures on biodiversity, according to the UN, are habitat loss, climate change, excessive nutrients and pollution, overexploitation and invasive alien species.

Wealthier nations, having contributed most to this destruction over the course of industrialisation, have been the most active in seeking to mitigate it over the past 50 years. In Australia, for example, biodiversity decline has been a key focus of landmark initiatives from the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement of 1988 to the 2011 Biodiversity Fund 7, which backs projects around carbon capture and storage, managing and creating native vegetation and building environmental resilience.

Western populations have generally become more enthusiastic about environmental activism than politics. Over the past 50 years in the UK, membership of political parties has plummeted, while membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) increased to more than 1 million 8. Greenpeace Australia Pacific claims to have 65,000 “financial supporters” (those who have donated in the past month) 9 – more people than are members of either the Liberal Party or Australian Labor Party 10.

But for all that goodwill, measures of biodiversity continue to decline. The Living Planet Index, the World Wildlife Foundation’s flagship publication which tracks changes in wildlife populations, shows animal populations roughly halved in size between 1970 and 2010. Populations of marine and terrestrial species declined 39 per cent over the period; freshwater populations by 76 per cent 11.

The Index attempts to quantify the share of blame apportioned to exploitation (37 per cent), habitat degradation (31.4 per cent), habitat loss (13.4 per cent) and climate change (7.1 per cent). The same report shows humanity’s ecological footprint continues to steadily rise, already well beyond the Earth’s biocapacity 12.

The LPI also reveals that these results are geographically patchy. Between 1970 and 2010, species populations declined in tropical zones at a much greater rate (56 per cent) than temperate zones (36 per cent). The report suggests that habitat destruction since 1970 has mostly taken place in the tropics (which tend to be poorer), but warns that the state of biodiversity in temperate areas (which tend to be richer) is not necessarily any better overall 13.

As The Economist points out, “poor countries tend to chop down forests, and rich countries to plant them” 14. This can be seen as an inevitable and not entirely unfair reflection of how the world has grown: the developed world caused the bulk of the problem, now it is responsible for the redress.

But the stark reality is that as developing nations continue to grow, and swathes of people are empowered to lead high-consumption lifestyles, humanity’s burden on the ecosystem will increase. Much like the narrative around climate change, the long-term challenge will be to enable developing economies to achieve high growth in a way that sustains biodiversity.

Free-market advocates, including those at The Economist, argue (or perhaps hope) that economic growth ultimately benefits non-human species. The theory suggests that as countries become richer, agriculture becomes more efficient, and people “start behaving better towards other species” 15. There is plenty of evidence that is the case – but plenty to suggest it is nowhere near enough.

1. United Nations Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, 2010 [https://www.cbd.int/gbo3/]
2. See Wikicurve
3. United Nations Global Biodiversity Outlook 4, 2014 [https://www.cbd.int/gbo4/]
4. The Economist, Extinction is a fact of life, but rates seem to be slowing down, September 12, 2013 [http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21585082-extinction-fact-li...
5. See Wikicurve
6. Essa, Azad, South Africa: Stop airline ban on animal trophies, Al Jazeera [http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/stop-airline-ban-animal-trophies-s...
7. See Wikicurve
8. The Economist, Hearts and minds: Stopping the slaughter of endangered species takes imagination, September 14, 2013 [http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21585089-stopping-slaughter...
9. Email correspondence with Greenpeace Australia Pacific on August 28, 2015
10. Alexander, Cathy, The party’s over: which clubs have the most members? Crikey, July 18, 2013 [http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/18/the-partys-over-which-clubs-have-the...
11. World Wildlife Foundation, Living Planet Index 2014 [http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_repo...
12. ibid
13. ibid
14. The Economist, The long view, September 14, 2013 [http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21585100-contrary-popular-b...
15. ibid