Meio Ambiente

Department of Public Information / News and Media Division / UN General Assembly

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon implored world leaders last week to commit to reversing the alarming rate of biodiversity loss and rescuing the natural economy before it was too late.

Conserving the planet's species and habitat was not only central to sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals, it also had the potential to generate annual economic gains worth trillions of dollars, he said during the opening of the General Assembly's high-level meeting as a contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity.

Allowing biodiversity to decline was like throwing money out the window, he continued.  "We must stop thinking of environmental protection as a cost. It is an investment that goes hand in hand with the other investments that you, as Heads of State and Government, must make to consolidate economic growth and human well-being in your countries."

Warning that the 2010 deadline for substantially reducing the rate of biodiversity loss would not be met, Ban Ki-moon urged leaders to muster the political will to turn that goal into reality, as their legacy and "gift to generations to come".  He also called on them to push forward the strategic plan on biodiversity and the 2050 biodiversity vision expected to be adopted at the Tenth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to be held in Nagoya, Japan, next month.

He said that, together, those initiatives would address such pressing concerns as the need to set concrete national targets before Rio+20, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, as well as access to and equitable sharing of the benefits derived from genetic resources.  "It is a solid plan, on paper. But it will need leadership to bring it to life", he said, calling on ministers of the environment, finance and planning, economic production and transport, health and social welfare, to do their part.

Echoing the Secretary-General's concerns, General Assembly President Joseph Deiss expressed hope that the discussions would contribute to the negotiations in Japan by ensuring that the strategic plan and vision would be ambitious and feasible. The Millennium target on environmental protection, set out in the 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, to stop biodiversity loss had not been met, but it was heartening that the international community was mobilizing to address the threat and take steps to assess the economic value of ecosystems.

He recalled that, last June, the international community had agreed, at an ad hoc intergovernmental and multistakeholder meeting in Busan (Republic of Korea), to create the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) with the aim of closing the information gap separating scientists from policymakers on the question of biodiversity and ecosystems.

He said preserving biodiversity was inseparable from the fight against poverty and the struggle to improve health and security for the present and future generations.  "Preserving biodiversity is not a luxury, it is a duty", he said, lamenting that worldwide human activity and climate change were destroying it, particularly in developing countries, with dire consequences for the world's poorest people.