The International Year of Biodiversity

What are you doing in the year of Biodiversity?

The UN declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB). Throughout the year countless initiatives will be organized to disseminate information, promote the protection of biodiversity and encourage organizations, institutions, companies and individuals to take direct action to reduce the constant loss of biological diversity worldwide.

Biodiversity is an all encompassing term to describe the variety of all life and natural processes on Earth. It is “the variability among living organisms from all sources [...] this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”. (Article 2, CBD).

Have you ever considered that the glass of clear, cold, clean water drawn from your faucet may have been purified for you by a wetland or perhaps the root system of an entire forest? Too often people take the availability of products and goods for granted. If we follow the chain of production for many products back to the source, more often than not we arrive back at biodiversity.
Continued loss of biodiversity will result in a rapid decline of the Earth’s natural wealth and a dramatic reduction of future ecosystem services. Agricultural production will dramatically decrease if bacteria and fungi, which make soil fertile and breakdown wastes disappear. The same will happen if insects, bats and birds – which ensure flower pollination – reduce in numbers. With 42% of anti-cancer drugs coming from natural sources, biodiversity loss will force us to face unprecedented challenges.
We are losing both the beauty and richness of our natural environment as well as destabilising the very ecological processes on which we depend. There can be no life on Earth without biodiversity.
To fight the continuous loss of biodiversity which is threatening the survival of the world as a whole, in 2002 world leaders committed to reduce this loss by 2010, following the pledge EU countries had already made in 2001. Find out more on the 2010 Biodiversity Target.

What you can do?
•Raise awareness of the importance of conserving biodiversity for human well-being and promote understanding of the economic value of biodiversity
•Enhance public knowledge of the threats to biodiversity and means to conserve it
•Encourage organizations (and through them individuals) to take direct or indirect biodiversity conservation activities
•Celebrate the achievements of Countdown 2010 partners and other stakeholders
•Reporting on the possible failures for not achieving the Target
•Prepare the ground for communicating the post-2010 target(s)
For further information contact: Email: info [at] countdown2010.net