Human activity has driven animals and plants into decline in every region of the world, putting our own well-being at risk by over-harvesting and polluting, a comprehensive species survey warned Friday.

Asia-Pacific fish stocks may run out by 2048 and more than half of Africa's bird and mammal species could be lost by 2100 unless drastic measures are taken, according to four comprehensive reports released at a major environmental conference in Medellin, Colombia.

Up to 90 percent of Asia-Pacific corals will suffer "severe degradation" by 2050, while in Europe and Central Asia, almost a third of known marine fish populations, and 42 percent of land animals and plants, are in decline.

In the Americas, just under a quarter of species assessed are at risk of extinction.

"This alarming trend endangers economies, livelihoods, food security and the quality of life of people everywhere," warned the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Compiled by nearly 600 scientists over three years, the reports underline that nature provides humans with food, clean water, energy, and regulates Earth's climate -- just about everything we need to survive and thrive.

One of the reports found that Nature's contribution to people can be in the order of thousands of dollars per hectare per year.

"We're undermining our own future well-being," IPBES chairman Robert Watson said of the findings.

"Biodiversity continues to be lost across all of the regions of the globe. We're losing species, we're degrading ecosystems... if we continue 'business as usual', we will continue to lose biodiversity at increasing rates."

The IPBES assessment divided the world into four regions: the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia -- the whole planet except for the Antarctic and the open seas.

Volunteer scientists combed through some 10,000 scientific publications for the most extensive biodiversity survey since 2005.

The findings were summarized in four reports approved by 129-member IPBES' member countries in Colombia. They contain guidelines for governments to make biodiversity-friendlier policies in future.

The texts make for grim reading, and come in the same week that the death of Sudan -- the world's last northern white rhino male -- served as a stark reminder of the stakes.

- Mass extinction will continue -

For the Americas, the survey warned that species populations -- already 31 percent smaller than when the first European settlers arrived -- will have shrunk by about 40 percent by 2050.

An estimated 500,000 square kilometers of African land is estimated to be degraded, it added.

The continent will suffer "significant" plant losses, and its lakes will be 20-30 percent less productive by 2100.

In the European Union, meanwhile, only seven percent of marine species assessed had a "favorable conservation status".

"If we continue the way we are... the sixth mass extinction, the first one ever caused by humans, will continue," Watson old AFP.

Scientists say mankind's voracious consumption of biodiversity has unleashed the first mass species die-off since the demise of the dinosaurs -- only the sixth on our planet in half-a-billion years.

- Demand will grow -

In many places, climate change driven by burning fossil fuels for energy was worsening the loss of biodiversity, the reports found.

"Climate change for the last 30 years has been increasing its role in changing nature, changing the ability of how nature can contribute to human well-being, and it is by far the fastest-growing pressure," said Jack Rice, a co-author of the Americas report.

"It is likely by 2050, a generation away, climate change will be as strong a pressure as all the ways that we have historically converted natural lands to human-dominated systems."

There are plenty of hurdles ahead.

"Economic growth is going to continue. Population growth is going to continue to 2050, therefore demand for resources will grow," said Watson.

Even at best-case-scenario levels, global warming will continue adding to species loss, which will cause further degradation of ecosystems.

But the scientists point to possible solutions: creating more protected areas, restoring degraded zones, and rethinking subsidies that promote unsustainable agriculture.

Governments, businesses, and individuals must consider the impact on biodiversity when taking decisions on farming, fishing, forestry, mining, or infrastructure development.

Different regions will require different solutions, said Watson.

"It's not too late" to halt or even reverse some of the harm, he said.

"Can we stop all of it? No. Can we significantly slow it down? Yes," Watson said.

The IPBES will bring out a fifth report on the global state of soil, fast being degraded through pollution, forest-destruction, mining, and unsustainable farming methods that deplete its nutrients.

IPBES: Keeping its finger on the pulse of biodiversity
Medell�n, Colombia (AFP) March 23, 2018 - The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which published a major assessment on the health of the world's species Friday, is an independent body created by more than 100 countries in 2012.

-- Its mission is to gather all the available science on the state of biodiversity, to project future changes, and advise governments on policies to better protect nature's bounty.

-- The IPBES has 128 signed-up country members. Its secretariat is based in Bonn, Germany.

-- It is not a UN body, but was modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose monumental reports helped alert the world to the dangers of global warming and paved the way for a 2015 global plan of action dubbed the Paris Agreement.

-- The IPBES brought out its maiden analysis, on the sorry state of bees and other pollinating animals, in 2016.

-- On Friday, it released four assessments on the state of biodiversity in four world regions -- the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia. Another, about the health of soil, will follow on March 26.

-- Each report takes three years to complete at a cost of about $1 million (about 806,000 euros) apiece.

-- The IPBES gets money from a trust fund replenished by voluntary contributions from member states.

-- The hundreds of scientists who work on each report are volunteers.

-- The experts do not conduct their own research, but pull together data from thousands of scientific publications and condense them into a manageable summary for government policymakers -- who sign off on their content.

-- The body was hit with conflict of interest claims when it emerged that two of the authors of its 2016 pollinator report worked for agrochemical companies Bayer and Syngenta, producers of neonicotinoid pesticides suspected of being involved in a mysterious surge in bee deaths. The IPBES insisted there was no conflict, and said multiple points of view are needed for a balanced analysis.

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