WORLD "NEEDS NEW WILDLIFE BODY "

[Anonymous]

World ‘needs new wildlife body’
The
world needs a new global organisation dedicated to stemming the loss of
plant and animal species.That is the argument put forward by a group of
eminent academics in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.They
call for the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel on
Biodiversity (IPB) to parallel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).Recent studies show continuing loss of biodiversity, with
the hippo and polar bear just added to the danger list.The 2006 Red
List of Threatened Species showed more than 16,000 plants and animals
sliding towards their demise, including a third of amphibian species
and a quarter of mammals.”The international community is failing on its
biodiversity targets,” said Alfred Oteng-Yeboah from the Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Ghanaian government’s
science advisory body.It’ll need significant investment – we’re not
sure exactly how much, but certainly more than anybody has given us
Jeffrey McNeely, IUC “And we see [the new body] as a process to
actually move the actions forward, to ensure that people get engaged in
all kinds of activity that will actually halt the loss of
biodiversity,” he told the BBC News website from Accra.Dr Oteng-Yeboah
is one of the 19 signatories of the Nature letter, who also include
former IPCC head Robert Watson from the World Bank, and the towering
figure of Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Slow progress
The
Convention on Biological Diversity, spawned by the Rio de Janeiro Earth
Summit in 1992, commits governments to achieving at least a significant
reduction in the rate of species and ecosystem loss by 2010.But year
after year, with the publication of successive Red Lists and numerous
other authoritative scientific reports, it becomes clear that progress
is not fast enough to meet that goal.Equally clear is the knock-on
impact on human livelihoods, particularly in developing nations.As the
Nature letter puts it: “Because biodiversity loss is essentially
irreversible, it poses serious threats to sustainable development and
the quality of life of future generations.”The Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, a vast four-year international research programme which
began to report its findings last year, found that two-thirds of
“ecosystem services” – the benefits which humans derive from the
natural world – are being eroded.Even when these services could be
protected, they often are not, sometimes because policymakers are not
acting on the available science.”One of the most dramatic examples is
mangroves,” said Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist with the World
Conservation Union (IUCN).”Scientists including economists have made it
very clear that mangroves are incredibly valuable as mangroves, much
more valuable than they are as shrimp farms,” he told the BBC News
website.”But because of political reasons, mangroves get converted into
shrimp ponds which produce cheap shrimps for export at the cost of
long-term environmental protection.”
Many bodies
Several
global bodies with a remit to reduce biodiversity loss already exist,
including the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and IUCN, which publishes the
Red Lists.    
WHAT ARE THE THREATS?
Human activities threaten 99% of Red List species
Habitat loss and degradation are the main threats, affecting more than 80% of listed birds, mammals and amphibians
Climate change is increasingly recognised as a serious threat
Other issues relating to human activity include introduction of alien species, over-exploitation and pollution
All
involve a majority of the world’s governments, and IUCN in particular
is closely linked with conservation bodies in the academic and NGO
spheres.Initiatives to build a new global biodiversity alliance have
been underway for a few years now, and were given a huge boost last
year by the French president Jacques Chirac, who spoke approvingly of
the concept at a conference in Paris.Even by the standards of the
jargon-laden conservation community, the name of the initiative – the
Consultative Process Towards an International Mechanism Of Scientific
Expertise on Biodiversity (Imoseb) – is a real mouthful.Now, through
the Nature letter, the concept has acquired a new name, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity (IPB).Jeffrey McNeely, who was
not a signatory on the letter in Nature, supports the idea.
He
believes the key issue is to integrate science with policymaking, in a
body that could co-ordinate and commission research with the full
involvement of governments which would have to decide whether to
implement its recommendations.But, he said, it would need money and
political commitment on a level which governments have not yet
displayed on biodiversity if it is to succeed. “We, the IUCN, would
love to be able to play this role, but nobody funds us to play this
role,” he said.”So to be realistic, we’re willing to be part of a
larger group of institutions and governments who are willing to put in
the necessary funds to make this happen.”It’s not going to be cheap;
it’ll need significant investment – we’re not sure exactly how much,
but certainly more than anybody has given us.”The proposed new body,
Imoseb or IPB, may arise from the ongoing process of UN reform that
could also re-write Unep’s mandate.In the end, the success of any
international attempt to stem biodiversity loss will have less to do
with internal structures and acronyms than with the will of funding and
regulating governments.The parallel of climate change leads to thoughts
of the Kyoto Protocol, which attempts, among other things, to sanction
governments that miss targets on greenhouse gas emissions.Should, or
could, a biodiversity agreement ever emerge with similar teeth? If it
did, would those teeth slowly be pulled, as have those of Kyoto, when
uncomfortable political realities became clear? 

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July 20, 2006 at 11:18 AM