UN International Year of Biodiversity

The UN has launched a year long event to highlight the global biodiversity ‘crisis’ as species are made extinct due to human pressures on habitats and resources. In 2002 at the Johannesburg summit, governments agreed to achieve a “significant reduction” in the rate of biological diversity loss by 2010, but this goal will not be met.

10 species considered by WWF to be especially threatened with extinction

“With species extinctions running at about 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate, some biologists contend that we are in the middle of the Earth’s sixth great extinction – the previous five stemming from natural events such as asteroid impacts.” Reports the BBC. Biodiversity loss occurs as a result of expanding cities, infrastructure and farming, and the results are detrimental to human health as well as natural ecosystems. The UN reports that as species and habitats are lost, so too are the services they provide such as defense from weather, water and air purification and resources for shelter and fire.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), urged governments and their leaders to renew their commitment to curbing biodiversity loss even though the 2010 goal will be missed. “The urgency of the situation demands that as a global community we not only reverse the rate of loss, but that we stop the loss altogether and begin restoring the ecological infrastructure that has been damaged and degraded over the previous century or so,” he said.

“We are facing an extinction crisis,” said Jane Smart, director of the biodiversity conservation group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). “The loss of this beautiful and complex natural diversity that underpins all life on the planet is a serious threat to humankind now and in the future.”

WWF is highlighting 10 species it considers especially threatened, pictured above, ranging from the  bluefin tuna to the Pacific walrus and the Javan rhino.

In the UK, the national IYB partnership – hosted from the Natural History Museum (NHM) – is asking every citizen to “do one thing for biodiversity” in 2010.