World nations fail planet species ─ UN Reports

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development enters a two-year cycle focusing on the sustainable use and management of resources. This year’s session began May 3 and ends on today. The 2011 session after reviewing this year’s focus on issues, problems, challenges, and possible solutions will look at concrete policy recommendations. Leading into the May 3-14 session, the commission issued reports of alarming concerns for biodiversity loss, interference with the nitrogen cycle, and climate change. The reports said 24 countries currently exceed their “biocapacity” contrasted with no countries exceeding their “biocapacity” in 1960.

Industrialized countries in 2005 used 50 per cent of the fossil energy, industrial minerals and metallic ores while accounting for only one-sixth of world population. The size of the rich countries’ ecological footprint continues to grow ─  resulting mostly from rising greenhouse gas emissions. Only a few countries have managed to weaken the link between economic activity and resource extraction, pollution and waste generation. Increased globalization, urbanization and rising prosperity around the world are taking increasingly greater tolls on the world’s ecosystems.

“Human progress has devastated biodiversity in the developed world and is rapidly doing the same in nations trying to emerge from poverty.”

The projected growth in population, income and wealth over the next 40 years is expected to put increasing pressure on resources and if rising middle classes of emerging economies emulate the consumption patterns of rich countries ─ “two planets would be needed by 2040.”

Though 168 countries have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity since the convention’s 1992 presentation at the UN ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro, according to the third Global Biodiversity Outlook, no single government has met its full range of ecological protection targets.

The world has collectively failed in its bid to halt the rapid loss of the planet’s species.

“‘The consequences of this collective failure, if it is not quickly corrected, will be severe for us all,’” says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “‘Biodiversity underpins the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend.’”


Sources and notes
“Report Finds Few Countries Able to Break Link between Drive toward Prosperity and Environmental Stress,” May 3, 2010, http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/newsmedi/nm_pdfs/csd-18/pr_trends_report.pdf
“The world has failed to curb a dangerous loss of biodiversity, UN report says,”
Deutsche Welle, May 11, 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5563677,00.html

Britannica, “Biodiversity and the stability of communities”
“… The development of more complex structures allows a greater number of species to coexist with one another. The increase in species richness and complexity acts to buffer the community from environmental stresses and disasters, rendering it more stable.… Diverse communities are healthy communities. Long-term ecological studies have shown that species-rich communities are able to recover faster from disturbances than species-poor communities.… The relationship between species diversity and community stability highlights the need to maintain the greatest richness possible within biological communities.… The tight web of interactions that make up natural biological communities sustains both biodiversity and community stability.”