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32
State of key ecosystems
40%
oveR 40% oF
the CoRAL
ReeFs AnD
MAngRoves oF
the RegIon hAve
DIsAPPeAReD
oveR the LAst
40 YeARs
In the past two decades, the state of ecosystems in the Asia and
Pacific region has been declining. Conversion of primary forests
to agricultural land has resulted in a marked decrease in primary
forests. Extensive coastal development and unsustainable exploitation
of marine resources have resulted in the destruction of many major
coastal habitats, including corals, mangroves, seagrasses, wetlands,
and salt marshes. Over 40% of the coral reefs and mangroves of
the region have disappeared over the last 40 years, resulting in
declining fish stocks. Freshwater ecosystems have been converted for
agricultural use and polluted with agricultural and urban waste, and
their natural flow has been disrupted by water storage for agriculture,
domestic use and hydropower. This has resulted in lower agricultural
yields, declining freshwater fish stocks, and reduced access to
clean drinking water.
One of the most widely used indicators being used to track the
state of biodiversity around the world is the Living Planet Index
(LPI), which can be regarded as an indicator of the health of the
planet’s ecosystems. The LPI reflects annual changes in the average
size of over 9,000 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles,
and amphibians from 1970 to 2008. Within those 38 years, the
global LPI fell by 28%. For the tropical and southern regions of the
Indo–Pacific 7 the LPI shows a decline of 64 % in key populations of
terrestrial and freshwater species over the same period (Figure 10).
The Living Planet Report 2012 (WWF 2012) has combined data from
different regions to show trends in the LPI for terrestrial, marine
and freshwater biomes and the world’s bio–geographic areas. This
makes it possible to interpret broad-scale trends in specific areas.
For example, the LPI for tropical regions is worse than for temperate
regions and the world as a whole. The reason for this rapid decline
in tropical species populations can be linked both to historical
patterns in land-use change and to a fairly recent increase in tropical
deforestation. This contrasts sharply with the general slowing
of deforestation in temperate regions (Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment [MEA] 2005a). The LPI also indicates steep declines in
the health of tropical marine and freshwater ecosystems.
7 The Indo–Pacific realm is only roughly equivalent to the region defined as “the Asia and
Pacific region” in this report (specifically Indo–Malaya, Australasia, and Oceania, but not the
northern People’s Republic of China, the Korean Peninsula, or Japan).