Talk has not halted biodiversity loss – now it’s time for action
25 August 2010. The Guardian – a leading UK newspaper – has launched a new campaign to put pressure on governments to act for biodiversity at the 10th Conference for the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP10). They are compiling a list of 100 specific tasks of which each will be targeted at a particular government. Leaders will be asked to sign up to this before the meeting in Nagoya. The campaign is called Biodiversity100.
The newspaper as it claims is asking governments to supplement the current treaty-making process with something real and specific, in such a way that success becomes possible and failure accountable.
Readers are asked to send their suggestions for actions that can make a major contribution to protecting a particular species or ecosystem; that are strongly and widely supported by scientific evidence published in academic journals; but that are politically costly or opposed by special interest groups. All these actions will be concrete, specific and achievable in a reasonable timeframe: they might, for example, involve stopping a destructive industrial project, protecting the habitat of an endangered species, changing or passing a law, or reintroducing a population of animals or plants.
