Food and climate fears combine to put focus on global biodiversity
Pastor Dale Morgan
Food and climate fears combine to put focus on global biodiversity*
PARIS, May 17 (AFP) May 17, 2008
In the midst of a global food crisis, experts from around world gather
Monday in the German city of Bonn for a marathon conference aimed at
ending the destruction of countless plant and animal species.
While the extinction of mammals or sea-life have long caught the public
imagination, pressing concerns over food prices and stocks, allied to
global awareness of the dangers of climate change, means the Earth's
plant life -- as a means of sustenance and of maintaining nature's
balance -- is suddenly catapulting its way up the political and
environmental agenda.
The ninth meeting of countries who signed up to the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit,
opening on Monday, will be a new beginning, according to German
Chancellor and host Angela Merkel.
At the base political level, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) warns that promises made in Brazil 16 years ago have not been
kept, despite the Rio deal setting a deadline of 2010 for a significant
reduction in the present rate of species extinction.
"We are not on the right path towards slowing the erosion of
biodiversity," said Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, France's ecology minister.
One in four mammal species, one in eight among birds, a third of
amphibian creatures and 70 percent of all plant life made the most
recent endangered list issued by another UN agency, the World
Conservation Union (WCU).
Man is directly blamed for the accelerating threat to global biodiversity.
The spread of invasive species -- valued for commercial trade reasons --
plus the effects of tourism and developments in agricultural technology,
each share responsibility, along with climate change.
For experts attending the two-week gathering in Bonn, maintaining the
myriad diversity of nature represents a life assurance policy covering
man's future in the face of global warming.
Over the last 100 years, for example, global agriculture has centred on
just three primary crops -- rice, wheat and corn -- to the detriment of
all others.
This dependency elevates the risk of a crisis which goes beyond price
rises, according to the Convention's Executive Secretary, Ahmed Djoghlaf.
Developing countries, for their part, are demanding a more equal
distribution of natural resources.
So the Bonn conference aims to produce a roadmap for the negotiation by
2010 of a whole raft of rules governing access to genetic resources --
and the re-distribution of benefits gained from their use.
The fight against bio-piracy is growing issue, with private companies
accused of exploiting the natural resources of developing countries and
associated knowledge acquired by their peoples.
Deforestation remains a major topic, with Djoghlaf stating that "each
year, more than 10 million hectares (100,000 square kilometres) of
forest are destroyed, whereas 80 percent of the world's biodiversity is
found in tropical rainforests."
The link with climate change is inescapable, as deforestation
contributes to the greenhouse effect blamed for global warming.
Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, wants the Bonn conference to
be seen as an ecological "watershed" in the same way as the December
2007 Bali conference -- with a little help from Al Gore and friends --
burst public consciousness on climate change.
Work is already underway on establishing a similar Intergovernmental
Panel on Biodiversity, with the planned body likely to take up its
function as early as 2009.