"Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before."
A 1,500-page report, compiled and approved by representatives from 132 countries around the world, has concluded that close to one million species of animal and plant are facing extinction due to the expansion of the civilisation of humans.
Robert Watson, chief of the UN science panel for biodiversity, said that "We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.
The report found that the speed at which the species are dying off is up to several hundred times faster than the regular rate of extinction.
Due to the constantly rapidly increasing human population, it has resulted in farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining altering the natural world at a rate "unprecedented in human history", while the newer threat of blobal warming has become a main influence in wildlife decline, mostly by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many species of plants and animals have evolved to survive in.
Sandra M. Díaz, a lead author of the study and an ecologist at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, said that "It's no longer enough to focus just on environmental policy.
"We need to build biodiversity considerations into trade and infrastructure decisions, the way that health or human rights are built into every aspect of social and economic decision-making."
The report itself - which was released in Paris on Monday and will be published in full before the end of the year - concludes with a chilling coda:
"Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before, around one million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken."
