Responding to the 2010 biodiversity challenge
2 November 2006, London, United Kingdom. On 3-4 July this year, a number of high level officials from national governments, international organizations, private sector, NGOs and academia met in London to discuss responses to the 2010 biodiversity challenge. We spoke with Richard Tarasofsky, Chatham House, who organized this meeting together with Countdown 2010.
The 2010 biodiversity target has been around for a while. What led you to organize this meeting?
My main motivation for convening the meeting was a concern that the international biodiversity regime is not leveraging the necessary actions in time to meet the 2010 biodiversity target. There are so many important treaties, processes, and initiatives in this area, and yet a real step change is needed in order to make the kind of meaningful gains required by the 2010 Target. So the idea was to bring together an group of experts and to debate and explore in depth what is needed.
What do you see as the most important outcomes? What are the next steps?
I think there were three very important messages. One was that there is a lot of mileage to be had in linking biodiversity to other, more prominent, global concerns – especially climate change. Secondly, the importance of linking science to policy was emphasised. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was certainly a valuable exercise, but it will rapidly lose its ability to influence policy without an enhanced process that has momentum. The final point was that the private sector must become much more engaged, because their influence on the state of biodiversity is so incredibly profound.
The meeting also discussed the link between biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. Are we trying to kill two birds with one stone?
I think there is no alternative. The meeting affirmed that the two agendas are intrinsically linked: poverty reduction will not take place without environmental conservation and biodiversity conservation will not work in developing countries unless it is seen as aligned to poverty reduction. More “win-wins” are needed, and these stories need to be widely communicated.
