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Biodiversity vital for achieving Millennium Development Goals,
London meeting concludes
United Nations Development Programme
5th March 2003
Action to protect the world's biological diversity is essential if countries are to halve severe poverty and achieve the other vital targets laid out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), over 150 experts from both North and South agreed at a high profile meeting in London on 2-4 March.
UK Development Minister Clare Short said in a keynote address: "The poor of the world are the most dependent on biodiversity, and we need to get a win-win situation, recognizing that food security is a key linkage."
Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Columbia University Earth Institute in New York and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General, said that "the biodiversity agenda is critical for meeting the needs of poor people" for food, water, and a safe environment and for preventing soil nutrient depletion and diseases caused by habitat change. Biodiversity issues are "very under-represented" in the MDG framework, he said, and the meeting is timely in helping make the link.
One of the first major follow-up efforts to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the meeting on "Biodiversity After Johannesburg" on the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in achieving the MDGs brought together scientists, policy makers and community leaders. It was hosted by UNDP in partnership with the Equator Initiative, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Nature Conservancy, UNDP, the UN Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and the UK Department For International Development.
UN Environment Programme's Executive Director Klaus Töpfer added emphasis to the emerging consensus that ecosystems are essential for meeting human needs, and "ultimately influence the development prospects of nations." When that capacity is diminished, "the most serious toll is exacted on the poor who are the most vulnerable to floods or crop failures," he said.
Ecosystems protecting biodiversity have tremendous ecological, social, and economic value, and provide important "services", worth an estimated US$5 trillion a year, noted Alistair Gammell of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They regulate climate, form soil, filter water and provide medicines and raw materials for countless goods, he noted.
In examining the critical role of ecosystem services, community leaders discussed how they can make positive contributions to development. "From the rainforests of Peru to the plains of Kenya, communities in the tropics are using ingenuity to stop the loss of plant and animal species and to loosen poverty's grip," said Sean Southey of UNDP's Equator Initiative. "We need to help build these creative local efforts into a worldwide movement that can achieve the MDGs."
"The meeting made real progress towards identifying tangible ways that biodiversity can help communities and countries achieve the MDGs," said Charles McNeill, UNDP Environment Programme Team Manager. Participants agreed on priorities for action by countries in both the North and South and also set out recommendations for the UN Millennium Project Task Forces, the main groups charged with developing strategies on the MDGs.
For further information please contact Eileen de Ravin, UNDP Equator Initiative.
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