Biodiversity loss could be making us sick — here’s why

BY 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in towns and cities. Urban living brings many benefits, but city dwellers worldwide are seeing a rapid increase in noncommunicable health problems such as asthma and inflammatory bowel disease.

Some scientists now think this is linked to biodiversity loss — the ongoing depletion of the varied forms of life on Earth. The rate at which different species go extinct is currently a thousand times higher than the historical background rate.