Press Conference on International Year of Biodiversity

 

Following its North American launch yesterday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), organizers of the International Year of Biodiversity said today that they must compete with hot-button topics such as climate change in order to rouse world attention to disappearing biodiversity, with losses estimated at a cost of €1.5 to €3 trillion annually.

Speaking this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference to announce the International Year, Morten Wetland, Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations, said the threats posed by climate change had figured prominently in talks during the recent Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity -- the sixth in a series of meetings going back to a year after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.  Designed to bring the scientific community and policymakers together, the Trondheim Conference sought to bridge the two issues, since preserving biological diversity, such as forests, was key to managing global warming.

“Climate has taken centre stage and threatened to overshadow many of the other important environmental issues that we face and that are equally important,” said Mr. Wetland.  For several years, Norway, a coastal nation, had taken the lead on marine preservation, and had begun to broaden its involvement in the biodiversity movement through issues such as deforestation.  At the Bali Climate Conference in 2007, the Government of Norway had pledged $500 million for measures to reduce deforestation.

More than a third of that amount -- $173 million -- had so far been handed over to countries participating in measures agreed under United Nations and World Bank auspices, he said.  Some of the funding had been provided bilaterally to countries such as Brazil, United Republic of Tanzania, Indonesia and Guinea, while the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), begun in 2008, was fully financed by Norway.

Accompanying Mr. Wetland were Veerle Vandeweerd, Director of the UNDP Environment and Energy Group, and Tran Triet, Director of the Phu My Lepironia Project, a conservation initiative in Viet Nam.  Ms. Vandeweerd said the tenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty agreed at the Earth Summit, would take place in October, and a wide array of stakeholders, including members of civil society and students, was being mobilized to prepare for it.

“Three quarters of the world’s population depend on natural resources for their daily living and their survival, for food, shelter, recreation,” she said, pointing out that 2.3 billion people lived in the world’s already highly degraded arid zones.  Poor people living on degraded land often contributed to further degradation, and scientists believed that about 60 per cent of the world’s ecosystems had been degraded through overuse in the last 60 years.  UNDP’s interest in preserving declining biodiversity had emerged from direct observation in the field, where staff had come to realize that, without healthy diversity and well-functioning habitats, countries would find it impossible to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

She said one of UNDP’s cherished goals was to unleash the economic potential of protected areas -- comprising 22 per cent of the world’s lands -- including territories controlled by indigenous communities and other areas set aside for conservation.  Its next challenge would be to protect biological diversity in industries such as mining, tourism and forestry.  To showcase the link between biodiversity and livelihoods around the world, the Programme awarded the Equator Prize every two years to initiatives that demonstrated how conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity could enhance livelihoods.

Mr. Triet, Director of the prize-winning project from 2006, a wetlands conservation initiative in Phu My, Viet Nam, said that funds provided by the World Bank in 2004 had enabled it to help poor villagers better design and market products woven from Lepironia reeds, doubling or tripling income levels while ensuring a sustainable harvest.  The slogan for the International Year, “Biodiversity is life”, was particularly true for communities engaged in subsistence living, he noted.  “When the natural resource base is degraded because biodiversity value has been degraded, then that very community that lives on them would be the one who would first suffer.”

He explained that the project had led the value of Phu My’s 6,000 acres of wetland to rise dramatically, demonstrating the possibility of improving livelihoods while still preserving biological diversity.  The project stood alongside countless others showcased by UNDP that demonstrated how community-based initiatives could complement the top-down approach usually taken by States and intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations.  However, although it had achieved much since receiving its initial funding nearly 7 years ago, Phu My would take many more years to become self-sustaining, he admitted, noting that, owing to the global economic downturn, demand for its products from Europe and the United States had been reduced.

Ms. Vandeweerd said it was natural for most projects to take time, since they often demanded that participants change how they lived, handled money and approached markets.  Governments must seek additional financing through taxes and various monetary incentives, and by making it easier for people to market their goods.  Showcasing successful projects through competitions and prizes was one way for UNDP to encourage communities and Governments to take action, she said, pointing out that a measure of its success was that, during international negotiations, Governments were beginning to insert language incorporating community-level actions into their action plans.

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For information media • not an official record