wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  BBC 20 Mar 06
Life's diversity 'being depleted'
By Tim Hirsch BBC News Environment Correspondent

IUCN Media Advisory undated
ACT NOW TO STOP WAVE OF EXTINCTIONS

PlanetArk 21 Mar 05
Humans Spur Worst Extinctions Since Dinosaurs
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO - Humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010, a UN report said on Monday.

Habitats ranging from coral reefs to tropical rainforests face mounting threats, the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity said in the report, issued at the start of a March 20-31 UN meeting in Curitiba, Brazil.

"In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago," said the 92-page Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report.

Apart from the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the other "Big Five" extinctions were about 205, 250, 375 and 440 million years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions or sudden climate shifts may explain the five.

A rising human population of 6.5 billion was undermining the environment for animals and plants via pollution, expanding cities, deforestation, introduction of "alien species" and global warming, it said. It estimated the current pace of extinctions was 1,000 times faster than historical rates, jeopardising a global goal set at a 2002 UN summit in Johannesburg "to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss".

"Unprecedented additional efforts' will be needed to achieve the 2010 biodiversity target at national, regional and global levels," it said. The report was bleaker than a first UN review of the diversity of life issued in 2001.

NOT ABATING

According to a "Red List" compiled by the World Conservation Union, 844 animals and plants are known to have gone extinct in the last 500 years, ranging from the dodo to the Golden Toad in Costa Rica. It says the figures are probably a big underestimate.

"The direct causes of biodiversity loss -- habitat change, over-exploitation, the introduction of invasive alien species, nutrient loading and climate change -- show no sign of abating," the report said.

Despite the threats, it said the 2010 goal was "by no means an impossible one".

It urged better efforts to safeguard habitats ranging from deserts to jungles and better management of resources from fresh water to timber. About 12 percent of the earth's land surface is in protected areas, against just 0.6 percent of the oceans.

It also recommended more work to curb pollution and to rein in industrial emissions of gases released by burning fossil fuels and widely blamed for global warming. The report said, for instance, that the annual net loss of forests was 7.3 million hectares (18 million acres) -- an area the size of Panama or Ireland -- from 2000-2005. Still, the figure was slightly less than 8.9 million hectares a year from 1990-2000.

And it said that annual environmental losses from introduced pests in the United States, Australia, Britain, South Africa, India and Brazil had been estimated at more than US$100 billion. About 300 "invasive species" -- molluscs, crustaceans and fish -- have been introduced to the Mediterranean from the Red Sea since the late 19th century when the Suez Canal opened.

It gave mixed overall marks for progress on four key goals.

It said there was "reasonable progress" towards global cooperation but "limited" advances in ensuring enough cash and research. It estimated that annual aid to help slow biodiversity losses sank to US$750 million from US$1 billion since 1998. And it said there was "far from sufficient" progress in better planning and implementation of biodiversity decisions and a "mixed" record in better understanding of biodiversity.

BBC 20 Mar 06
Life's diversity 'being depleted'
By Tim Hirsch BBC News Environment Correspondent

Virtually all indicators of the likely future for the diversity of life on Earth are heading in the wrong direction, a major new report says.

The Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) is published as national delegates gather in Brazil under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention commits governments to slow the decline in the richness of living systems by 2010.

The GBO says "unprecedented efforts" will be needed to achieve this aim. It sets out 15 indicators of progress towards the 2010 target, ranging from trends in the extent of wildlife habitats to the build-up of nutrients such as nitrogen which can harm aquatic life.

Only one of the 15 - the area of the world's surface officially protected for wildlife - is moving in the right direction for biodiversity. Even here, however, most areas still fall far short of targets to protect 10% of each region with distinctive combinations of species.

The other indicators point to an accelerating decline, which has seen the rates of species extinctions surge to their highest levels since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Forests continue to be lost at a rate of six million hectares a year - that's about four times the size of the English county of Yorkshire - and similar trends are noted for marine and coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs, kelp beds and mangrove forests.

The abundance and variety of species continue to fall across the planet, according to an index measuring the percentage of species with good prospects for survival; bird variety is on the decline in every ecosystem type from the oceans to the forests.

Less complete indications are available for other groups of animals and plants, but it is feared they would show a similar picture.

Within reach

The report stresses that despite the gloomy trends, the target set by the Convention - involving a stabilisation, not a reversal of these losses - is still within reach. "Meeting the 2010 target is a considerable challenge, but by no means an impossible one," the GBO notes. "Unprecedented additional efforts are needed, and these must be squarely focused on addressing the main drivers of biodiversity loss."

These "drivers" are identified as: the loss of habitat, largely through the expansion of agriculture climate change the introduction of alien species which can badly disrupt ecosystems after being carried across the world, often accidentally in ship ballast tanks over-exploitation of wildlife, for example through overfishing the build-up of nutrients through chemical fertilisers, sewage and air pollution

The great challenge in meeting the biodiversity target comes in the fact that these pressures are currently projected to remain constant or to accelerate in the near future - so
slowing the extinction slide would involve major changes over wide areas of human activity.

In the jargon, this requires "mainstreaming" of biodiversity concerns into areas of policy well beyond the remit of the environmental officials and ministers from more than 180 countries meeting in the Brazilian city of Curitiba over the next fortnight.

BENEFITS UNDER ALTERNATIVE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

The full economic value of sustainable ecosystem management is rarely recognised and frequently ignored Converting mangroves to shrimp farms brings immediate monetary benefit but diminishes other important 'services' For example, mangroves provide timber, boost fisheries and provide storm protection - all of value to a much wider community If these 'externalities' are properly taken into account, the benefits of ecosystem conversion look weaker

GLOBAL ECOLOGIAL FOOTPRINT

Resource demand challenges Earth's regeneration capacity
Fish are harvested faster than their natural replacement rate
Water is being withdrawn faster than aquifers are replenished

The biosphere takes one year and nearly three months to renew what humanity exploits in one year, on this analysis

IUCN Media Advisory undated
ACT NOW TO STOP WAVE OF EXTINCTIONS

The world's governments have committed themselves to slow down the current loss of biodiversity by 2010. Now is the time to move to action, says the World Conservation Union to the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP8)

Background: The world is facing the biggest ever extinction crisis--we are losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1,000 times higher than the estimated natural extinction rate.

There is one single species responsible for this massive extinction wave: human beings. It is in our hands to slow down this process.

In fact, the world's leaders have already agreed to do exactly that by 2010, by committing to the 2010 biodiversity target.

Four years are left--it is high time for action. From 20 - 31 March 2006, the world's nations will meet under the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) in Curitiba, Brazil to discuss strategies to reduce the current loss of biodiversity.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has one clear message to this 8th Conference of the Parties to the CBD: it urgently needs to move from commitments to action, to start implementing what it has agreed--with only four years left.

Key Issues: The World Conservation Union has identified five key strategies to achieve the 2010 biodiversity target. Substantive decisions are expected at the CBD Conference on all of them.

Protection of the high seas: The high seas, covering 64 percent of the Earth's surface, remain completely unprotected. Industrialized fishing fleets take advantage of this situation, putting at risk marine high seas biodiversity that is almost entirely unknown to us--only 0.0001 per cent of the deep-sea floor has been subject to biological investigations. Therefore, high seas marine protected areas of seamounts, cold water corals and sponge beds need to be established urgently, based on our current available knowledge. Seabed bottom trawling needs to be prohibited on an interim basis in the most vulnerable areas that are lacking protection.

Sustainable use of biological resources: harvesting timber or hunting wild animals for meat or fur happens every day and is essential for the livelihoods of millions of people. The problem, both for biodiversity and people, is overexploitation. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and its new methodologies to assess trends in species status can help to define levels of sustainable use of plant and animal species.

Who is allowed to use genetic resources and traditional knowledge for commercial purposes and how should the benefits be shared? Biopiracy--or, in more precise terms, the access to genetic resources and the equitable sharing of benefits will be a hot debate at the CBD Conference. The World Conservation Union believes that benefits of commercially-viable genetic resources must be shared equitably with countries of origin of these resources and with those local communities owning knowledge about their use.

Biodiversity: something for the Greens--The protection and sustainable use of biodiversity need to be integrated into the policies and practices of other sectors. The CBD needs to give a major impetus to mainstream biodiversity into the broader policy agenda ? the conservation of the diversity of life depends on us all and vice versa.

Get involved: What does every city, region, country need to do to slow down the loss of biodiversity by 2010? The World Conservation Union has facilitated the development of the Countdown 2010 Initiative in Europe to help governments, the private sector and civil society to reach the 2010 biodiversity target, by identifying priority areas of action and raising awareness.
links
Related articles on global biodiversity
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com