Bigger-picture report on the biodiversity conference going on now at Japan, with not one nation having met protection targets set earlier on.
In other reports from the conference, most progress is being made by wealthier nations that have the economic capability to set aside critical land and water areas. Most of the world's species loss and ecosystem destruction is going on in developing nations that can't afford protection measures.
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World leaders tackle a tall order: How to preserve life on Earth
PATRICK WHITE
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010 11:30AM EDT
Over the next 11 days, 193 national delegations will descend on Nagoya, Japan, in pursuit of a vexing goal befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth.
At stake is the fate of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement signed amid great hope and fanfare in the early 1990s, the status of which has fizzled steadily ever since. The document bound countries to cut mass species loss “significantly” and preserve 10 per cent of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. But this year brought the sobering realization that not one country had met those targets.
After 20 years of high-level talks and treaties, mass extinction continues apace at between 1,500 and 15,000 species a year, depending on the estimate, and leaders are running out of opportunities to turn it around.
“This is the one chance governments have to fix the loss of species and loss of biodiversity, said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based group working closely with governments in Nagoya. “In some ecosystems, we only have 10 or 15 years left before they’re gone.”
Part of the problem is cosmetic. Since then-prime-minister Brian Mulroney first signed the convention on behalf of Canada in 1992, the issue of biodiversity loss has been overshadowed by sexier environmental fixations such as holes in the ozone, electric cars, acid rain and climate change.
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With its ambitious targets undermined by inaction, the future viability of the convention hangs in the balance. Several groups have suggested new 2020 targets, most with a heavy emphasis on marine habitat, the most neglected of all ecosystems over the past decade.
The Montreal-based CBD Secretariat (funded in part by $800,000 in federal funds) has proposed 20 new targets that include the elimination of subsidies harmful to biodiversity, reducing by half the degradation of forest ecosystems, eliminating destructive fishing methods and protecting 15 per cent of land and sea areas.
Mr. Prentice will attend the final days of negotiations as a symbol of how seriously Canada takes the convention.
Missing the 2010 targets should inspire us all to do better. I do hope we will successfully negotiate a new protocol,” Mr. Prentice said. “It’s an extremely important summit because biodiversity is an area where we all need to improve. This is a real issue for us and our children.”
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