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A new scientific report offers the most exhaustive look yet at how nonnative plants and animals can drive extinctions, disrupt food systems and harm human health.
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Zebra mussels, native to the Caspian and Black Seas, on a tree branch that had fallen into Rice Lake near Brainerd, Minn. Credit...David Brewster/Star Tribune, via Getty Images
Sept. 4, 2023
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Thousands of invasive species introduced to new ecosystems around the world are causing more than $423 billion in estimated losses to the global economy every year by harming nature, damaging food systems and threatening human health, a wide-ranging scientific report published on Monday has found.
The costs have at least quadrupled every decade since 1970, according to the report, which was based on 2019 data. Researchers warned that the cost figures were conservative estimates because of the challenges in accounting for all effects.
Over the last few centuries, humans have intentionally and unintentionally introduced more than 37,000 species to places outside their natural ranges as the world has become more interconnected, the assessment said. More than 3,500 of those are considered invasive because they are harmful to their new ecosystems.
Invasive nonnative species were a major factor in 60 percent of recorded extinctions of plants and animals, according to the report, which was produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for the United Nations. It expands on a sweeping 2019 report by the same panel, which found that as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.
