IN THE NEWS

More than 90% of the leading global crop types we grow for food and non-food are visited by bees. Thanks to bees we can enjoy a range of foods from apples and pears to coffee and vanilla. And if you are wearing cotton, that's because the cotton plant your threads came from was pollinated.

Albert Einstein is famously quoted concluding “if the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU?

We are reliant on the ecosystem. 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, analysis has found, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

New research shows that surveyed animal populations have declined by more than 50 percent on average in the last two generations.

Understanding the greater meaning of animal/insect extinction will lead us to understanding we are part of the ecosystem. This is going to the defining challenge of our time. Many species of bees are on the brink of extinction in parts of the UK and globally. Bees are disappearing due to climate change, habitat loss, pollution and other factors. We have to start connecting the dots.

The harm has mostly been done in the last 20-50 years in terms of the speed of the damage to biodiversity decline. Therefore does 12 year seem so implausible as to the possibility of reversing recent habits/methodologies.