Opinion | Why is the biodiversity crisis neglected by the media?

Today’s level of biodiversity loss is unprecedented. According to a 2019 United Nations report, 75% of the global land surface has been changed and 85% of wetland area has been lost. Around a quarter of assessed species are threatened with extinction, including 26% of mammals, 41% of amphibians, 12% of birds and 34% of conifers.

This is not a remote issue that only affects rainforests and coral reefs in faraway places. Michigan’s biodiversity is also at risk: we have lost over 99% of our prairies and savannas, about 50% of our forests and nearly 40% of our wetlands. More than 400 animals and plants are on the state’s endangered and threatened species list. And while Michigan has joined President Biden’s “America the Beautiful” initiative — also called “30 by 30” — which seeks to protect at least 30% of our lands and oceans by 2030, so far less than 20% of Michigan’s land is protected. The State has no clear plan on how we will meet our own ambitious “Michigan the Beautiful” goal. We have a long way to go in just five years.

Nearly 200 countries recently attended the 16th United Nations biodiversity summit, also known as COP16. The focus of the meeting was to review the progress towards implementing the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. So far progress towards these goals has not been impressive — more than 80% of countries missed the deadline before the summit to submit nature conservation plans describing how they will meet the 23 global nature targets agreed upon in 2022. The US is one of only two countries who did not even ratify the framework.

The global community’s track record on meeting past biodiversity goals is just as bad. Of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets defined at the 2010 UN biodiversity summit, not a single one was met 10 years later, and only six were partially met. And while COP16 did have some successes, it again failed to deliver on two main goals of the summit: implementing a strategy to finance the global work of protecting biodiversity and deciding how to track progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

It is clear that global leadership does not value biodiversity. Why is that? One possible reason is that biodiversity loss has received only scant attention from the media and the public is hardly aware of the issue or knows why it matters.  While many scientists argue that biodiversity loss is at least as big a threat as climate change, it has not been covered nearly as much in the news. And even when biodiversity is covered, studies have shown that it is not always reported accurately or comprehensively.

Not only scientists recognize the risks biodiversity loss poses to humans.
The World Economic Forum surveyed nearly 1,500 experts from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society in their 2024 Global Risks Report. The top four global risks over a 10-year period identified in the survey were all environmental factors: extreme weather events, critical changes to earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and natural resource shortages.

So why do the media not cover biodiversity loss more? One possible reason could be simply how complex the concept of biodiversity is - it can refer to genes, species and even entire ecosystems. Biodiversity loss has many causes – land use change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species and others. That makes not only measuring what is lost difficult but also how to solve it. Journalists who are not experienced in environmental issues may not have the background knowledge to report on the topic accurately, resulting in misleading coverage and confusion among readers.

Similar to climate change, the biodiversity crisis is also hobbled by extinction denial by corporations and individuals with a stake in the status quo. To counteract these forces and clearly communicate the complexity of biodiversity loss requires experienced journalists.  At a time when environmental coverage is cut from many newsrooms due to budget shortfalls, it is difficult for reporters to be able to spend the time to get the science right.

COP16 was an opportunity to bring the biodiversity crisis to the world’s attention, yet once again no widespread coverage materialized. It is time that journalists step up to the plate and communicate the urgency of biodiversity loss in a way that catches the public’s attention and motivates them to pressure their governments to finally take action. Time is running out.