One million of the planet's eight million species are threatened with extinction1 by humans, scientists warned Monday in what is described as the most comprehensive assessment2 of global nature loss ever.
科学家们本周一（5月6日）发布了迄今为止最全面的一份全球自然损失评估报告，报告警告称，地球上800万个物种中有100万个正因人类而遭受灭绝威胁。
Their
landmark3 report paints a
bleak4 picture of a planet
ravaged5 by an ever-growing human population, whose insatiable consumption is destroying the natural world.
The global rate of species extinction "is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years," according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem6 Services (IPBES), a UN committee, whose report was written by 145 experts from 50 countries.
Shrinking habitat, exploitation of natural resources, climate change and pollution are the main drivers of species loss and are threatening more than 40% of
amphibians7, 33% of coral reefs and over a third of all
marine8 mammals with extinction, the IPBES report said.
"The health of
ecosystems9 on which we and all other species depend is
deteriorating10 more rapidly than ever," said Sir Robert Watson, IPBES chair, adding that "transformative change" is needed to save the planet.
The report comes six months after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world has less than 12 years to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming.
Just as with climate change, humans are the main culprits of biodiversity damage, altering 75% of Earth's land and 66% of marine ecosystems since pre-industrial times, according to the report.
The report emphasizes the
disastrous11 impact of population growth and rising demand. It notes that the world's population has more than doubled (from 3.7 to 7.6 billion) in the last 50 years, and gross domestic product per person is four times higher.
More than a third of the world's land and 75% of freshwater supplies are used for crop or
livestock12 production, it
noted13.
收听单词发音 
