Delegates from across
the world have gathered in Nagoya,
Japan for the Convention on Biodiversity
(CBD) summit. Governments are meeting to
discuss progress on biodiversity targets,
as set by parties to the convention in 2002.
The Nagoya summit will also consider adopting
new set of targets for 2020 that aim to
tackle biodiversity loss.
Remarks by Achim Steiner,
UN Under-Secretary General and Executive
Director of the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) at the opening of the summit:
Delegates, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
I am delighted to address
the opening of the 10th Meeting of the Conference
of the Parties to the CBD here in Nagoya.
Honorable Minister Matsumoto,
I would like to thank the Government of
Japan and the leaders and people of Aichi
Prefecture and the city of Nagoya for being
such splendid and welcoming hosts.
Japan's ancient culture
and legendary technological innovation has
given the world many things.
In Aichi, a centuries-old
tradition of ceramics is today providing
key components for emerging clean technologies:
the Toyota Prius has become the by word
for the hybrid car evolution.
But perhaps in many
ways Satoyama may prove to be among the
most important exports of Japan to a world
still searching for sustainability.
This ancient practice
of balancing human needs with nature - of
taking a systems approach explicitly linking
farming and ecosystem services and that
sees the mountains, forests, freshwaters
and arable land as a seamless landscape
- is gaining understanding, awareness and
traction in many places.
Already one achievement
has been made here in Japan.
Congratulations to governments
and to the Executive Secretary and his team
for reaching agreement on "the Nagoya
- Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on
Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol
on Biosafety".
Ladies and gentlemen,
Many international meetings
are crucial - but this one is perhaps one
of the most crucial that any of us will
attend.
Indeed I do not believe
there can have been many conferences linked
with biological diversity upon which the
eyes of the world have fallen so piercingly
and firmly and where citizens are waiting
and watching for leadership.
Here there is an opportunity
to shape the landscape and the trajectory
of humanity's response to the loss of its
natural and nature-based assets in profound
and transformational ways.
Here and together we
can begin to put in place the kinds of far
sighted policy-responses and smart mechanisms
that have been incubating for years in many
countries and communities.
But whose moment has
come, and is coming not a moment too soon.
Biodiversity - Challenges
Now Firmly on Global Agenda
Ladies and gentlemen,
Biodiversity and ecosystems
have in recent years rapidly rocketed up
the international agenda.
They have become - and
quite rightly become - issues on a par with
the other major challenges for this generation:
climate change being the most obvious.
Human-kinds ability
to impact the natural systems underpinning
lives and livelihoods has gone from the
local to the global and is reaching far
and wide.
Equally humanity's scientific
and technological ability to measure, assess
and chronicle those impacts is today unprecedented.
This year's Global Biodiversity
Outlook-3, prepared in close collaboration
with UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring
Centre, points to 'tipping points' fast
emerging - changes for example in freshwater
systems that soon may be irreversible.
The Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment of 2005 concluded that 60 per
cent of the services provided by the world's
ecosystems that support human well being
are now either degraded or heading that
way.
Changes in biodiversity
as a result of human activities were more
rapid in the past 50 years that at any time
in human history, it concludes.
The report, the output
of more than 1,300 scientists from more
than 90 countries supported by UNEP, the
Global Environment Facility and many other
partners, underlined that rather than exercising
the brake the world continues to choose
the accelerator.
This is hurtling us
all on a collision course towards an extremely
sobering destiny.
The issue in front of
this meeting is whether human beings have
the collective intelligence, wisdom and
common humanity to read the writing on the
wall.
And to now decisively
act and to manage rather than mine the resources
that on the one hand makes this planet habitable,
and on the other are its fundamental source
and engine room of livelihoods and development.
And to do this in a
way that is fair and equitable to those
who have conserved that wealth over millennia.
But who are all too
often and increasingly confronted with day
to day realities, external pressures including
sometimes perverse market forces and other
challenges, just to survive.
It was not by chance
that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
included 'Human Well-Being' in its title
- that is yours and my well being, your
children, families, communities and countries'
well being: and our collective responsibility
to the next generation's well being.
