This year marks the deadline for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal concerning biodiversity, and a group of researchers weighed in on just how well we achieved our targets in a new study. While their review outlines the some progress, the planet's array of species is in a desperate state. New efforts to conserve not just land, but diversity among organisms, need to be undertaken with great urgency.
The biodiversity subsection of the Millennium Development Goal Seven aimed to "reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss." This is an awfully vague goal considering biodiversity is an umbrella term for "the variety of genes, species, and ecosystems that constitute life on Earth."
But it couldn't be more important. Biodiversity affects every aspect of our lives, from agriculture to carbon sequestration and storage, where studies have demonstrated that the economic value of benefits from healthy, diverse natural ecosystems may be 10 to 100 times the cost of maintaining them, according to a new paper published in Science.
By the measure of the Millennium Goal, the global community has made significant strides in conserving the rich diversity of species on the planet. "Since 1992, the global network of protected areas has continued to grow steadily, increasingly yearly by an average 2.5 percent in total area and 1.4 percent in numbers of sites," the study reported.
But major gaps in where and what we are conserving persist: 12 percent of Earth's land surface is protected versus a meager .5 percent of the world's oceans and 5.9 percent of territorial seas. Additionally, some groups of species -- such as vertebrates -- are better documented, understood, and protected than others. These are the types of discrepancies that need to be addressed in future efforts to preserve biodiversity.
There also needs to be more of a focus on mitigating blatantly destructive activities such as illegal logging. In 2009, only 14 percent of licensed logging was sustainability-certified, while up to half of all tree harvesting was illegal.
The study authors propose three ways to better integrate biodiversity conservation into mainstream thought: (1) managing biodiversity as a public good, (2) integrating biodiversity into public and private decision making, and (3) creating enabling conditions for policy implementation.
In plain English: People need to wake up and start including biodiversity as a forefront in discussions, rather than an afterthought. Hot spots of biodiversity should be targeted for new conservation efforts, and the general distribution of animals, trees, and unique ecosystems should guide decision making on new development plans and schemes for promoting a greener society.
For this reason, the Convention on Biological Diversity teamed up with the United Nations to make this year, 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity. Their bottom line: protecting biodiversity is in our self-interest.
Image: Map of the biodiversity areas and terrestrial carbon density in Tanzania. Maps like this one can be used in decision making. UNEP-WCMC
Tags: Animal Science, Conservation
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