Barensweeën van een nieuwe hype: biodiversiteit

Statement by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, at the Opening Session of the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

This is indeed a defining moment in the history of mankind.

As Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki stated “The problem of Nature is the problem of human life”. However, today human life is a problem for Nature. Assembled at this historical Aichi-Nagoya biodiversity summit, we the 16,000 participants assembled today from all over the world, representing the 193 Parties and their partners, are called upon to address the unprecedented loss of biodiversity seriously compounded by global warming. To do so, let us have the courage to look in the eyes of our children and admit that we have failed, individually and collectively, to fulfil the Johannesburg promise made to them by the 110 Heads of State and Government to substantially reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010. Let us look in the eyes of our children and admit that we continue to lose biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, thus mortgaging their future.

The 170 fourth national reports received by Parties to-date confirm that we continue to lose biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. The third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook demonstrates that, today, the rate of loss of biodiversity is up to one thousand times higher than the background and historical rate of extinction. The report predicts that if we allow the current trends to continue we shall soon reach a tipping point with irreversible and irreparable damage to the capacity of the planet to continue sustaining life on Earth. The report warns that the status of biodiversity for the next million years will be determined by the action or inaction, of one specie, we human being of mankind in the coming decades.