Extinction - a Real Possibility

"We are nearing a tipping point, or the point of no return for biodiversity loss. Unless proactive steps are taken for biodiversity, there is a risk that we will surpass that point in the next 10 years." Japanese Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto told the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya , Japan. 

Leaders are there to discuss why governments failed to curb these trends by 2010, as they pledged in 2002. Governments first agreed back in 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit that the ongoing loss of biodiversity needed attention.

Species are becoming extinct at 100-1,000 times the natural rate, key habitat is disappearing faster than ever, and ever more water and land is being used to support people.

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

"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.

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are being asked to agree and achieve new 2020 targets. "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.

"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.

A UN-sponsored team of economists has calculated that loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is costing the human race $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year. The majority of species studied over the past ten years are moving closer to extinction rather than further away.

"Since the 1960s we've doubled our food consumption, our water consumption," said Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

"The world's population has doubled, and the economy has grown sixfold; in 2050 there will be 9.2 billion people on the planet." About 12% of the world's land is now under some form of protection.

But in other areas, countries - particularly in the tropics - have made little progress towards the 2010 target. Delegates are also negotiating a draft agreement on exploiting the genetic resources of the natural world fairly and sustainably.

The protocol, named Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), aims to prevent "biopiracy" while enabling societies with abundant plant and animal life to profit from any drugs or other products that might be made from them.

In the past few decades alone, 20% of the oceans' coral reefs have been destroyed, with a further 20% badly degraded or under serious threat of collapse, while tropical forests equivalent in size to the UK are cut down every two years.

Many are hoping that the meeting in Japan will awaken governments to our planet’s serious plight and not only sign-up to agreements but actually implement the policies agreed - before it is too late.