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Visualizing the Biggest Threats to Earth’s Biodiversity

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Earth's biodiversity loss

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The Biggest Threats to Earth’s Biodiversity

Biodiversity benefits humanity in many ways.

It helps make the global economy more resilient, it functions as an integral part of our culture and identity, and research has shown it’s even linked to our physical health.

However, despite its importance, Earth’s biodiversity has decreased significantly over the last few decades. In fact, between 1970 and 2016, the population of vertebrate species fell by 68% on average worldwide. What’s causing this global decline?

Today’s graphic uses data from WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 to illustrate the biggest threats to Earth’s biodiversity, and the impact each threat has had globally.

Measuring the Loss of Biodiversity

Before looking at biodiversity’s biggest threats, first thing’s first—how exactly has biodiversity changed over the years?

WWF uses the Living Planet Index (LPI) to measure biodiversity worldwide. Using data from over 4,000 different species, LPI tracks the abundance of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians across the globe.

Here’s a look at each region’s average decline between 1970 and 2016:

RankRegionAverage decline (between 1970 and 2016)
1Latin America & Caribbean94%
2Africa65%
3Asia Pacific45%
4North America33%
5Europe and Central Asia24%

Latin America & Caribbean has seen the biggest drop in biodiversity at 94%. This region’s drastic decline has been mainly driven by declining reptile, amphibian, and fish populations.

Despite varying rates of loss between regions, it’s clear that overall, biodiversity is on the decline. What main factors are driving this loss, and how do these threats differ from region to region?

Biggest Threats to Biodiversity, Overall

While it’s challenging to create an exhaustive list, WWF has identified five major threats and shown each threats proportional impact, averaged across all regions:

ThreatProportion of threat (average across all regions)
Changes in land and sea use50%
Species overexploitation24%
Invasive species and disease13%
Pollution7%
Climate Change6%

Across the board, changes in land and sea use account for the largest portion of loss, making up 50% of recorded threats to biodiversity on average. This makes sense, considering that approximately one acre of the Earth’s rainforests is disappearing every two seconds.

Species overexploitation is the second biggest threat at 24% on average, while invasive species takes the third spot at 13%.

Biggest Threats to Biodiversity, By Region

When looking at the regional breakdown, the order of threats in terms of biodiversity impact is relatively consistent across all regions—however, there are a few discrepancies:

In Latin America and Caribbean, climate change has been a bigger biodiversity threat than in other regions, and this is possibly linked to an increase in natural disasters. Between 2000 and 2013, the region experienced 613 extreme climate and hydro-meteorological events, from typhoons and hurricanes to flash floods and droughts.

Another notable variation from the mean is species over-exploitation in Africa, which makes up 35% of the region’s threats. This is higher than in other regions, which sit around 18-27%.

While the regional breakdowns differ slightly from place to place, one thing remains constant across the board—all species, no matter how small, play an important role in the maintenance of Earth’s ecosystems.

Will we continue to see a steady decline in Earth’s biodiversity, or will things level out in the near future?

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Agriculture

Visualizing the World’s Flower Bouquet Export Market

This graphic highlights global flower bouquet sales in 2021 and how a few countries dominate the entire flower export market.

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Flower Bouquet Exports 2021 Shareable

Visualizing the World’s Flower Bouquet Export Market

For many, flower bouquets are the go-to gift choice when congratulating a colleague, visiting an ailing relative, or simply showing love and kindness to partners and friends.

And the global popularity of these carefully-arranged and vividly-colored bundles has led to the creation of a billion-dollar flower bouquet market. And demand for beautiful bouquets has kept growing, with global flower bouquet exports in 2021 reaching $11 billion—which is a 30.2% rise since 2017.

Louis Lugas Wicaksono uses data from World’s Top Exports to highlight the spread of this industry. In this image, he shows the flower bouquet exports across different countries in 2021.

Countries Trading the Most Flower Bouquets

Far at the top of the list and best known for their tulips, the Netherlands dominated the flower bouquet export industry in 2021.

RankCountryContinentFlower Bouquet Exports (2021 USD)
1🇳🇱 NetherlandsEurope$5.7B
2🇨🇴 ColombiaAmerica$1.7B
3🇪🇨 EcuadorAmerica$927.3M
4🇰🇪 KenyaAfrica$725.5M
5🇪🇹 EthiopiaAfrica$254.5M
6🇧🇪 BelgiumEurope$150.0M
7🇮🇹 ItalyEurope$140.9M
8🇨🇳 ChinaAsia$124.6M
9🇲🇾 MalaysiaAsia$90.5M
10🇨🇦 CanadaAmerica$82.0M
11🇮🇱 IsraelAsia$77.5M
12🇿🇦 South AfricaAfrica$70.4M
13🇪🇸 SpainEurope$69.6M
14🇩🇪 GermanyEurope$65.8M
15🇹🇷 TurkeyAsia$59.4M
🌎 Rest of the world$735.2M

The small European nation exported $5.7 billion worth of bouquets in 2021, accounting for over half of global flower bouquet trade. This dominance comes from centuries of being the world’s largest producer of flowers and being a floral trade hub due to its advantageous location and connections with other growers, suppliers, and wholesalers.

Colombia and Ecuador fall next on this list with their exports totaling $1.7 billion and $927 million, respectively. Roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums are heavily exported from these South American nations.

On the other side of the Atlantic, cut rose flower exports were the leading drivers for Kenya and Ethiopia, earning these African nations $725 million and $254 million respectively.

Together, these five nations contributed to 85% of the world’s flower bouquet trade in 2021.

Post-Pandemic Strategies

Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the flower bouquet export industry remained resilient. However, this was not an easy feat.

Many florists embraced new strategies like online sales and free home deliveries, and exporters dealt with global shipping slowdowns. Some countries including Columbia and Kenya focused on producing flowers with longer shelf lives that could be shipped further away.

As we continue to drift away from the pandemic and global trade eases up, we can expect this industry to blossom further.

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