The world's top conservation body is holding its world congress starting Thursday in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi and will unveil its updated "red list" of threatened species.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whose decisions help set the global agenda on environmental protection, will on Friday publish its list ranking at-risk plant and animal species from "least concern" to "extinct".

The congress, held every four years, sheds light on the dire state of the world's biodiversity. An increasing number of animals suffer from the destruction of their natural habitat, climate change, and water, air and soil pollution.

According to the United Nations's expert scientific panel on biodiversity (IPBES), biodiversity has declined every decade in the past 30 to 50 years

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