Invasive species cost the world at least $423 billion every year as they drive plant and animal extinctions, threaten food security and exacerbate environmental catastrophes across the globe, a major new United Nations-backed report has found.
Invasive species that wreck crops, ravage forests, spread disease, and upend ecosystems are spreading ever faster across the globe, and humanity has not been able to stem the tide, a major scientific assessment said Monday.The spread of species is hard evidence that the rapid expansion of human activity has so radically altered natural systems as to tip the Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, scientists say.
From rats, cats and mosquitoes to a rogue s gallery of plants, a major scientific assessment Monday catalogued more than 37,000 alien species worldwide, 10 percent of them classified as aggressively harmful, or "invasive". Humanity s growing population, economic growth, land-use change and climate change, "will increase the frequency and extent of biological invasions and the impacts of invasive alien species", the intergovernmental science advisory panel for the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, known by its acronym IPBES, warned in a report. mh/rlp/gil
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Mango farmer Eufria Nyadome used to earn USD 60 from selling a 20-litre bucket of fresh mangoes and now can barely make USD 20 even though her mango trees are giving a good yield. She is throwing away