Biodiversity conservation beyond 2010

Biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth – is a public good that needs to be integrated into all policies. That was the message of a paper that the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) published today in the journal Science.

Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is a member of the CCI and our Director of Science, Abi Entwistle, is one of the authors of the paper entitled ‘Biodiversity Conservation Beyond 2010.’

The authors make the case that effective conservation of biodiversity is essential for human survival and the maintenance of ecosystem services such as freshwater provisioning and climate regulation.

Radical changes are required that recognize biodiversity as a global public good. The benefits that humans receive from nature through ecosystem services have huge economic values. Measuring those values is essential for making the connection between human well being and biodiversity conservation more explicit.

Policy makers must then incorporate those economic values to design systems that reward positive individual actions or penalize harm towards biodiversity. We also need to focus on and scale up those conservation approaches that have proven themselves successful.

FFI hopes that readers of the paper listen to our clarion call for biodiversity and take action to halt the ongoing decline of our planet’s variety of life.

Read ‘Biodiversity Conservation Beyond 2010’ by Rands et al on the Science website.

Read an article by the Environment Editor of The Independent on the paper.

Photo credits: J P Moreiras / FFI