(Reuters) - The world cannot afford to allow nature's riches to disappear, the United Nations said on Monday at the start of a major meeting to combat losses in animal and plant species that underpin livelihoods and economies.

The United Nations says the world is facing the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, a crisis that needs to be addressed by governments, businesses and communities.

The two-week meeting aims to prompt nations and businesses to take sweeping steps to protect and restore ecosystems such as forests, rivers, coral reefs and the oceans that are vital for an ever-growing human population.

These provide basic services such as clean air, water, food and medicines that many take for granted, the United Nations says, and need to be properly valued and managed by governments and corporations to reverse the damage caused by economic growth.

More resilient ecosystems could also reduce climate change impacts, such more extreme droughts and floods, as well as help fight poverty, the world body says.

"This meeting is part of the world's efforts to address a very simple fact -- we are destroying life on earth," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, said at the opening of the meeting in Nagoya, central Japan.

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are being asked to agree new 2020 targets after governments largely failed to meet a 2010 target of achieving a significant reduction in biological diversity losses.

A U.N.-backed study this month said global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 totaled $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 percent of global gross domestic product.

Greens said the meeting needed to agree on an urgent rescue plan for nature.

LIFE-SUPPORT

"What the world most wants from Nagoya are the agreements that will stop the continuing dramatic loss in the world's living wealth and the continuing erosion of our life-support systems," said Jim Leape, WWF International director-general.

WWF and Greenpeace called for nations to set aside large areas of linked land and ocean reserves.

"If our planet is to sustain life on earth in the future and be rescued from the brink of environmental destruction, we need action by governments to protect our oceans and forests and to halt biodiversity loss," said Nathalie Rey, Greenpeace International oceans policy adviser.

Developing nations say more funding is needed from developed countries to share the effort in saving nature. Much of the world's remaining biological diversity is in developing nations such as Brazil, Indonesia and in central Africa.

"Especially for countries with their economies in transition, we need to be sure where the (financial) resources are," Eng. B.T. Baya, director-general of Tanzania's National Environment Management Council, told Reuters.

"It's not helping us if you set a lot of strategic targets and there is no ability or resources to implement them."

Poorer nations want funding to protect species and ecosystems to be ramped up 100-fold from about $3 billion now.

Delegates, to be joined by environment ministers at the end of next week, will also try to set rules on how and when companies and researchers can use genes from plants or animals that originate in countries mainly in the developing world.

Developing nations want a fairer deal in sharing the wealth of their ecosystems, such as medicines created by big pharmaceutical firms, and back the draft treaty, or "access and benefit-sharing" (ABS) protocol.

For poorer nations, the protocol could unlock billions of dollars but some drug makers are wary of extra costs squeezing investment for research while complicating procedures such as applications for patents.

Conservation groups say failure to agree the ABS pact could derail the talks in Nagoya, including agreement on the 2020 target which would also set goals to protect fish stocks and phase out incentives harmful to biodiversity.

Japan, chair of the meeting, said agreement on an ambitious and practical 2020 target was key.

"We are nearing a tipping point, or the point of no return for biodiversity loss," Japanese Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto told the meeting.

"Unless proactive steps are taken for biodiversity, there is a risk that we will surpass that point in the next 10 years."(By Chisa Fujioka; Reporting by Chisa Fujioka; Editing by David Fogarty)

Source: Reuters

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18 October 2010 – Delegates from across the world have gathered in the Japanese city of Nagoya today for a United Nations conference to discuss a new strategy to halt the alarming loss of the Earth’s biodiversity, driven largely by human activity, a trend experts warn threatens the planet’s capacity to sustain human well-being.

“Here there is an opportunity to shape the landscape and the trajectory of humanity’s response to the loss of its natural and nature-based assets in profound and transformational ways,” Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told the opening session of the 12-day Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD).

“Here and together we can begin to put in place the kinds of far sighted policy-responses and smart mechanisms that have been incubating for years in many countries and communities,” he added.

During the event, more than 15,000 participants – the highest number ever recorded for such a meeting – representing the 193 Parties and their partners are expected to wrap up negotiations on a new strategic plan on biodiversity for the 2011-2020 period.

That plan will be submitted to the high-level segment of the conference, which will begin on 27 October and will be attended by several world leaders and more than 100 environment ministers.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, the Executive Secretary of CBD, said that species extinction rates are now as high as a thousand times the natural rate, and that the world is nearing a “tipping point” where there could be irreversible loss.

“Let’s have the courage to look in the eyes of children and admit that we have failed,” he said.

Mr. Steiner highlighted the findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 which concluded that 60 per cent of the services provided by the world’s ecosystems that support human well-being are now either degraded or are nearing degradation.

It also found that changes in biodiversity as a result of human activities have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any other time in human history.

The UNEP chief said that the report “underlined that rather than exercising the brake, the world continues to choose the accelerator.

“This is hurtling us all on a collision course towards an extremely sobering destiny. The issue in front of this meeting is whether human beings have the collective intelligence, wisdom and common humanity to read the writing on the wall.”

Mr. Steiner underlined the need for humanity to recognize that the stability and human well-being in the 21st century will rest on the fate of all life on Earth.

“Science tells us that we are currently going through the sixth wave of extinctions,” he said, questioning how long until human beings are included on the list of threatened species issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“If that is what science is telling us, what will this meeting tell the world it is doing about it?

The plants and animals, fungi and micro-organisms that produce and clean our air, generate drinking water, hydro-power and irrigation; provide food, shelter and medicines and also bring to many joy and a spiritual dimension to our daily lives need a big helping hand from this 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties – if not for their sakes, but for ours.”

In a related development, UNEP announced today that a mapping exercise to identify where countries’ carbon stocks overlap with areas that are rich in wildlife and important for local peoples’ livelihoods is under way in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The project aims to support international efforts to conserve forests in order to combat climate change, in a way that delivers other benefits, including conservation of economically-important ecosystems linked with water, fertile soils and other crucial services.

Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), governments are negotiating a mechanism to provide payments for the so-called UN REDD+ scheme, which seeks to create incentives to reverse the trend of deforestation and conserve forests’ carbon stocks.

According to UNEP, nearly 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions result from changing the way land is used, mainly through deforestation.

Source: UN News Centre

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HANOI — Major talks on global warming next month must provide reassurances for the future of the market in greenhouse-gas emissions beyond 2012, the World Bank's environment chief said Monday.

"What they have to find out is how to ensure that carbon trading does not collapse," Inger Andersen, the Bank's vice-president for sustainable development, told AFP in an interview.

She added that "finding a way that that can be ensured would be very important to the world".

Carbon trading began under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only treaty to set down targeted curbs in man-made gases that trap solar heat, inflicting potentially catastrophic changes to the world's climate system.

Developed countries which have ratified the Protocol, mainly in Europe, can buy or sell credits to help meet their emissions quota.

The Protocol's current roster of pledges runs out at the end of 2012. As a result, the future of the market has been cast into doubt by uncertainty surrounding talks on a global climate treaty beyond this date.

Negotiations resume in Cancun, Mexico from November 29 to December 10 under the 194-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto's parent organisation.

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Civil society groups are stepping up pressure on the government to honor its pledged moratorium on exploiting forests despite protests from corporations, especially forestry businesses.

Eleven NGOs, including Greenpeace, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Sawit Watch, Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) and Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) issued a joint statement on the moratorium to the government on Thursday.

The two-page document outlined principles, criteria and steps to implement the moratorium.

The groups also condemned the Indonesian government for barring Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior from entering Indonesian waters. The Greenpeace vessel was scheduled to dock in Jakarta on Wednesday enroute to Wasior, West Papua, on a humanitarian mission.

The NGOs called on the government to issue a legal basis for the implementation of the moratorium, review permits on forest exploitation and withdraw permits for those found running illegal businesses.

Walhi executive director Berry Forqan, who read out the statement, said the groups were aware of efforts by business entities to stop the planned moratorium.

“There is no reason to cancel it. Disasters in recent years have partly been caused by massive deforestation,” he said.

The group said the moratorium should not have a time limit, but should be imposed until the country met good forest management practices.

Indonesia and Norway signed a US$1 billion climate deal in May requiring Jakarta to impose a two-year moratorium on exploiting natural forest and peatland by 2011. However, there are still no government regulations to implement the moratorium.

Indonesia is required to set up independent institutions on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), financial and measurable, reportable and verifiable (MRV) schemes.

A senior Forestry Ministry official said there were no plans to extend the moratorium. “We appreciate the input from NGOs but we should focus on a two-year term for the moratorium,” the director of forest products management at the ministry, Bambang Sukmananto, said.

Visiting Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo said the moratorium offered a golden opportunity for Indonesia to improve forest governance.

“Use the moratorium to make space to engage the public, conduct proper research and look at alternatives [on forest governance],” he said. (By Adianto P. Simamora)

Source: The Jakarta Post

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