Date published: 2006/03/20
The BBC says:
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.
...
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.
Nothing surprising here. And you can just about bet your last dollar that the targets will not be met. There are just too many human beings on the planet, and none volunteering to leave.
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