Scientists have released a damning report warning that environmental chaos sown by invasive species, whose spread around the world has seen economic damages quadruple every decade since 1970. Climate change in form of warmer temperatures are expected to further drive the expansion of invasive species.
The team of 86 researchers from 49 countries released a four-year assessment
of the global impacts of some 3,500 harmful invasive species, with a key finding
that economic costs now total at least $423 billion every year, with the
alien invaders playing a key role in 60% of recorded plant and animal
extinctions.
Worse still, ecologist Helen Roy co-chair of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services (IPBES) report quoted by Reuters says, "We also know this is a problem that is going to get much, much worse,"
In East Africa a mention of invasive species quickly brings to many the
grim reality faced by the shared Lake Victoria, as the water hyacinth remains a huge ecological disaster of our times, not to mention the Nile
perch introduced in the 1950's, that is now responsible for
the sudden population decline of many other fish species and extinction of hundreds of others.
However, all this has been further fueled by human-induced pollution, the uncontrolled urban population sprawl (population estimated to be more than 30 million) and the sporadic effects of climate change in the Lake Victoria region.
