♦ Globally, nature provides services worth around US$125 trillion a year, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report.
♦ In the 20th century, freshwater fish have had the highest extinction rate worldwide among vertebrates.
♦ Nearly 200 million people depend on coral reefs for protection against storm surge and waves.
♦ Rainforests are shrinking: almost 20% of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years.
♦ In the last 50 years, global average temperature has risen at 170 times the background rate.
♦ At least 70% of new small molecule drugs introduced over the past 25 years have come from a natural source.
♦ Almost 6 billion tonnes of fish and other seafood have been taken from the world’s oceans since 1950.
♦ Today, 90% of the world’s seabirds are estimated to have fragments of plastic in their stomach.

For the India Factsheet, click here.

And Who Gave Us the Right?


We establish our interest and delight in nature programmes about the lives of animals on television and ironically, our enjoyment of meat side by side, without thinking animals had rights, will we ever begin to see both the wild ones and the ones we habitually eat as having lives of their own?