What is the biggest threat to nature?

The major assessments point to how we use land and sea. The UN-backed biodiversity panel IPBES concludes that since 1970 land-use change has done the most damage to nature on land and in fresh water, followed by direct exploitation such as hunting, fishing and logging. At sea, fishing comes first, and agricultural expansion is the most widespread form of land-use change1. For Denmark, the Danish Biodiversity Council finds the main causes are intensive land use and resource extraction that leave no large, connected, high-quality natural areas2.

Two examples: an analysis of 170 bird species at over 20,000 sites in 28 European countries found that farmland birds fell by almost 57 percent between 1980 and 2016, with pesticide and fertiliser use the main driver34. In 63 protected areas in Germany, flying insect biomass fell by 76 percent over 27 years, though the researchers could not explain the fall by weather or land use5. Climate change is expected to hit nature harder the more the planet warms6.