14 DAY TRIAL // Authorities from some 54 nations in the United Kingdom recently to discuss the terms of the United Nations initiative that would turn 2010 into the International Year of Biodiversity. The meeting was meant to be a starting point in negotiations that would culminate at a full UN summit this October, to be held in Nagoya, Japan. At the recent meeting, officials agreed that protecting biodiversity would bring an important economic advantage to their nations, and that an international agreement was needed to tackle the challenges that stemmed from losing biodiversity on account of human factors.
The BBC News reports that some of the most influential triggers that affect the number and populations of species living today are human activities such as over-hunting, poaching, overfishing and artificially induced global warming from burning fossil fuels. The UK meeting was also meant to secure international agreement on some of the most fundamental issues underlying conservation. This was done so that the October UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) would not be plagued with the same type of controversies and stalls that affected the 2009 Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change.
“One of the most important things was a strong feeling that we need to come out of Nagoya with something concrete on the table – something that works all the way down the local and community levels as well. People are really focused on trying to stem the tide [of biodiversity loss] and reverse it,” Huw Irranca-Davies, who is the Marine and Natural Environment minister of the United Kingdom, told the British news agency. Unlike the situation that occurred in Copenhagen, the official went on to say, the recent convention saw strong international agreement on the need to reduce biodiversity loss, and also many governments giving their accord for swift action to be taken.
“We have a chance of a much tougher target for 2020 than we had for 2010, which would be about having no net biodiversity loss. I think the key thing is whether we'll see over the next few years concerted action on the drivers of biodiversity loss – if we don't see that in the next few years, then we certainly won't see good results by 2020,” the Chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, Simon Stuart, added. There was already an international agreement into effect from 1992 until 2010, which stated that biodiversity had to be protected, but in practice it yielded little to no results.