The Living Planet Report 2022 is WWF’s most comprehensive study to date of trends in global biodiversity and the health of our planet.

The latest flagship publication reveals global wildlife populations have plummeted by 69% on average since 1970.

The staggering rate of decline is a severe warning that the rich biodiversity that sustains all life on our planet is in crisis, putting every species at risk – including us.

The climate and nature crisis is not only an environmental issue, but an economic, development, security, social, moral and ethical issue too.

Our world’s most vulnerable people, places and wildlife – and those least responsible for the climate and nature crisis – are at greatest risk, and already suffering.

While conservation efforts are helping, urgent action is required if we are to reverse the loss of nature this decade.

The Living Planet Index combines global analysis of 32,000 populations of 5,230 animal species to measure changes in the abundance of wildlife across continents and taxa, producing a graph akin to a stock index of life on Earth.

According to the report, monitored freshwater populations have dropped by an average of 83% since 1970, more than any other species groups. Habitat loss and barriers to migration routes account for around half the threats to these populations.

A million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football pitches every minute.

Climate change is creating a hotter, less stable world for people and nature, and making extreme weather events both more frequent and more intense. Many species are already feeling the heat, from warm-water coral reefs to puffins in the UK, emperor penguins in Antarctica and monkeys in the Amazon rainforest – and things will only get worse as our global temperature rises.

Latin America and the Caribbean region – including the Amazon – has seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years.

Habitat destruction, climate change and other human-led activities are pushing our world’s natural spaces and the species that live there to the brink of collapse. Currently, on the IUCN red list more than 41,000 species have been assessed to be under threat of extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

We’re now in a race to bring our world back to life before it’s too late. The solutions exist, and we should be using every opportunity to address the crisis. There are many ways in which we can reverse the loss of nature, including bolder and more ambitious conservation efforts. However, we also need to transform the way we produce and consume, including our food and energy – two of the major drivers of nature loss and climate change.