From BirdLife International, a good companion piece for the earlier one on CITES...
From government policy to personal choices, we must recognise the value of biodiversityAs the world’s governments prepare to meet in Nagoya, Japan, to set new targets for halting biodiversity loss, authors from BirdLife International are among a group of leading conservation scientists and practitioners calling for a fundamental shift in the way we view biodiversity.
In their paper, published today in the journal
Science, they argue that conservation of biodiversity is essential for the maintenance of vital ecosystem services, and ultimately for human survival. But they make clear that until governments, businesses and individual people begin to take the real value of biodiversity into account in their choices and decisions, the diversity of life on Earth will continue to decline.
Despite international commitments and an increase in conservation efforts worldwide, the rate of biodiversity loss has not slowed down. Recent assessments show a continued overall decline in populations of wild species and in the size, connectivity and condition of habitats, with accelerating risk of extinctions, and a steep fall in the benefits that we can rely on biodiversity to provide...
http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2010/09/value-of-biodiversity.html
