Context: According to a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, only about 3 per cent of land surfaces are ecologically intact.

• It released a survey of forest cover and species losses to understand better what was happening beneath the world’s tree canopies.

Key highlights of the study

About 3% of land surfaces might be ecologically intact– still home to their full range of native species and unblemished by human activity.

• A very little of today’s world resembles Planet Earth from 500 years ago.
• Around 20% to 40% of land ecosystems were undamaged.
• Today’s still-pristine habitats, containing the same species abundance as in the year 1500 A.D., were mostly found in regions considered less hospitable for humans, including the Sahara Desert and chilly regions of Greenland and northern Canada.

Other intact habitats were in areas under extreme pressure from deforestation and development, including parts of the Amazon in Latin America.

• Currently, only 11% of these areas are under protection.
• More than 30 years ago, wilderness areas – natural areas that have not been considerably modified by humans – were identified as priorities of conservation and protection actions.

The integrity of natural ecosystems has been recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as an important goal in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

• An effort led by the United Nations to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s land and waters by 2030 - up from about 17 per cent currently under some form of protection - has gained momentum over the last year, as governments including the United States have pledged to commit more land to conservation.
• Some conservationists argue, however, that the world’s conservation goal should be much higher than 30 per cent in order to prevent mass die-offs of species. A 2019 U.N. report estimated as many as 1 million species are under threat of extinction due to human activity.