Wild animal populations disappeared by a staggering 52 percent from 1970 to 2010, according to an alarming new survey—and the key to stopping this alarming free fall of global biodiversity may lie in cities. The dwindling numbers, outlined in the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2014, are inversely proportional to the enormous human population explosion that occurred within the same period, from roughly 3.7 billion people in 1970 to seven billion by 2010.
On top of that, the greater bulk of that seven billion-boom is now living in cities rather than rural areas for the first time ever.
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This rapid urbanization has placed unprecedented stresses on biodiversity worldwide, which is why the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2014 emphasizes that wildlife losses cannot be slowed without revamping our cities to meet this century’s new environmental standards. City dwellers may be cloistered to the devastation of wilderness worldwide, but they are the biggest drivers behind it.
You might wonder why urbanization would be a bad thing for the environment, since it means depopulation of rural wilderness area. But take an example my colleague Derek Mead reported on in 2012, in which rural populations in the Amazon migrated to nearby cities. The depopulation enabled wildfires to devastate the Peruvian Amazon, destroying countless precious resources and habitats.
Around the world, similarly unpredictable chain reactions have accompanied the mass flocking to cities. If we fail to adapt to these shifting population distributions, wildlife will continue to suffer dramatic losses. And as the Living Planet Report makes clear, loss of biodiversity isn’t just an environmental issue—it will have broad social, economic, and ethical repercussions too.
With good planning and governance, cities can meet people’s needs much more efficiently than less densely populated areas.
Fortunately, many urban activists have recognized the looming threat, and are working to retool the urban environment for the twenty-first century. “We love cities!” WWF spokesperson Jenna Bonello told me, quoting the title of one of the report’s key chapters.
“A growing numbers of cities are demonstrating their willingness to lead in the transition to a sustainable future,” she continued. “With good planning and governance, cities can meet people’s needs much more efficiently than less densely populated areas. Over the next three decades, tremendous investment will take place in urban areas.”
Currently, urban areas create about 70 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, but several cities are reducing their emissions with clean energy initiatives. C40 Cities, an organization devoted to building greener cities, recently announced that urban centers could reduce emissions by 10 percent by 2030, a much more aggressive goal than many countries have adopted.
Many cities have stepped up to the plate for this challenge by integrating solar power into their infrastructures. According to the WWF report, Cape Town has committed to installing up to 150,000 solar water heaters, which will account for almost half of the average family’s energy expenditures. Chicago and Shanghai have both committed to leadership in rooftop solar panel development.
Urban farming and efficient water management have also become central goals for cities. Mexico City has been a frontrunner on both counts: 60 percent of its federal district has been set aside for protected natural reserves, and the city’s reforestation program is planting two million new trees a year to augment its water supply. On top of that, Mexico City is shooting to convert 10,000 cubic meters of its rooftops to garden agriculture annually.
Silverback gorilla in Virunga National Park. Photo: Innocent Mburanumwe.
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Vancouver, and Seoul are cited in the WWF report as cities that have reduced car emissions by promoting public transportation or outright banning new highway development. These initiatives will help wildlife by potentially staving off climate change, which is wiping out species at an alarming rate, but also by reducing the need for urban populations to resort to scavenging rural fossil fuels in regions set aside for conservation.
Virunga National Park—which borders the DRC, Uganda, and Rwanda—is specifically highlighted by the WWF as a poster child of this conflict between fossil fuel extraction and wildlife conservation. It’s also an example of how environmental advocacy occasionally scores a win against industry, as the WWF was able to prevent the UK-based oil company Soco from drilling in the park in June 2014.
The optimistic outlook adopted by city leaders across the world is heartening, and it certainly leavens some of the depressing wildlife numbers that precede it in the new WWF report. While it’s no surprise to see perennially green cities like Copenhagen and Vancouver getting shoutouts, the efforts of huge energy consumers like Shanghai and Mexico City speaks volumes about a global desire to bring biodiversity back from the brink. Ironically, the actions of these urban, manufactured environments may ultimately be the biggest influence on the future of wilderness and wildlife worldwide.
