All rights reserved to UNITED PHOTO PRESS as a partner of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity.
The United Nations General Assembly has declared that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity (AIB), and that it will help promote awareness of the importance of biodiversity worldwide. Biodiversity can be translated as a variety of life forms on the planet. Its preservation guarantees the survival of rare species and also enables studies to cure diseases.
It is an opportunity to:
• Stress the importance of biodiversity for our well-being.
• Reflect on the achievements already made to safeguard biodiversity.
• Encourage our redoubled effort to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss.
Saving biodiversity requires everyone's effort. Through activities worldwide, the global community will work together to ensure a sustainable future for all of us.
Secretariat of the Convention for Biological Diversity is the focus for the International Year of Biodiversity. Established at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and for the equitable sharing of the multiple benefits of biodiversity. With 191 partners, CBD has an almost universal participation.
Objectives of the International Year of Biodiversity 2010
Through the International Year of Bioviversity 2010, we hope to reflect on the goals of organizations working around the world to safeguard biodiversity. Thus, the objectives of the
International Year of Biodiversity are as follows:
• Intensify public awareness of the importance of safeguarding biodiversity and the threats underlying biodiversity.
• Promote knowledge of the actions taken to safeguard biodiversity that have been carried out by communities and governments.
• Encourage individuals, organizations and governments to immediately take the necessary steps to end the loss of biodiversity.
• Promote innovative solutions to reduce threats to biodiversity.
• Start the dialogue between stakeholders for the steps to be taken in the post-2010 period.
•Framework
You are an integral part of nature; their destiny is closely linked to biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places where they live and their environments, all over the world.
You trust this diversity of life to provide you with food, fuel, medicines and other essential goods that you simply cannot live without.
So far, we have lost this rich diversity at a very rapid pace as a result of human activities. This impoverishes us all and undermines the ability of the living systems on which we depend to resist growing threats, such as climate change. This is vital for the present and future human well-being. We need to do more. This is the time to act.
2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. People around the world are working to safeguard this irreplaceable natural wealth and reduce the loss of biodiversity.
The time to act
You are biodiversity. Most of the oxygen it breathes comes from plankton in the oceans around the world and lush forests across the globe. The fruits and vegetables you eat were probably pollinated by bees, and the water you drink is part of a huge global cycle that surrounds you; clouds, rains, glaciers, rivers and oceans.
Your diet depends almost entirely on the plants and animals around us; from the grasses that give fish and meat to rice and wheat, from wild or agricultural landscapes. Your body, which contains over 100 trillion cells, is interconnected to everything around you and to a wider world, in a wonderfully complex and timeless system. You share your atoms with every being and object in the natural world. You are both old and inconceivably young. Bodiversity is life; your life is biodiversity and biodiversity is you.
You share the planet with as many as 13 million different living species, including plants, animals and bacteria, of which only 1.75 million have been named and registered. This incredible natural wealth is an invaluable treasure that forms the basic foundation of your human well-being. The systems and processes these millions of neighbors collectively produce provide their food, water and the air they breathe - the basic foundations of life.
As if that were not enough, they also provide you with wood and plant materials for furniture, construction and fuel, the mechanisms that regulate your climate, control currents and recycle your waste and the recent compounds and chemicals from which medicines are made. It may well be taking biodiversity for granted; with everything so obviously around you, it is sometimes easy to forget that it is there - that you are part of it and cannot live without it.
The contribution of biodiversity to your life is not only practical, physical and utilitarian; it is also cultural. The diversity of the natural world has been a constant source of inspiration throughout human history, influencing traditions, the way our society has evolved and providing the basic goods and services on which exchange and the economy rest.
The disappearance of rare species is an incalculable loss that leaves us all much poorer. The loss of iconic and symbolic species is not just a cultural tragedy; it also undermines our own survival.
The beautiful and generous diversity of the natural world is being destroyed as a result of various human activities. The felling and burning of forests, the removal of mangroves, intensive cultivation, the pressure of pollution, overfishing and the impacts of climate change are, together, destroying biodiversity.
We can stop this loss, the question is: will we do it?
The International Year of Biodiversity is our opportunity to prove that we will. 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. Let us reflect on the achievements made to safeguard biodiversity and focus on the urgency of our challenge for the future. This is the time to act.
Carlos Alves de Sousa
President of United Photo Press
