Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Radical and creative action is needed to conserve the variety of life on Earth, warns a new report from the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Environment Programme. "We need a new vision for biological diversity for a healthy planet and a sustainable future for humankind," United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon writes in the latest Global Biodiversity Outlook. "To tackle the root causes of biodiversity loss, we must give it higher priority in all areas of decision making and in all economic sectors." The report is based on scientific assessments, over 100 national reports and future scenarios for biodiversity.

The report concludes that the five principal pressures driving biodiversity loss - habitat change, over-exploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change - are either constant or increasing in intensity. For a fraction of the money committed by governments in recent years to avoid economic meltdown, a much more serious and fundamental breakdown in the Earth’s life support systems could be averted. "Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet," according to Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "The arrogance of humanity is that somehow we imagine we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral: the truth is that we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050," warned Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director.

Speaking at the latest meeting of the Conference of the African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, chief negotiator for Africa, identified two issues that must be addressed before the next major climate summit in Cancún, Mexico. "One is that the mechanism through which Africa negotiates as a single team is completely an unprecedented thing for us," he said. "We need to streamline our negotiating mechanism at all levels so that losses are ironed out before Cancún." The second issue is the implementation of the Copenhagen accord in general and its financial provisions in particular. "Even if the African Union Summit endorsed the Copenhagen accord there is a wide spread skepticism about the implementation of the accord expressed during the last Summit," he continued.

The European Commission (EC) may be considering upgrading the European Union's carbon emissions target to a 30 per cent reduction by 2020 in order to break the deadlock in the climate negotiations. Economic recession has significantly reduced the cost of meeting the 30 per cent target according to a paper to be published by the EC later this month. The current goal is a 20 per cent reduction. Previously, an upgrade to 30 per cent had been dependent on action by other nations, which has not been forthcoming. Connie Hedegaard, European commissioner for climate change, has argued that a more stringent target could be the only way to force up the price of carbon and promote investment in low-carbon technologies. "With business as usual and the 20 per cent target we will not see a substantially higher price of carbon," she said. "That is a challenge because we need innovation. Around €30 [per tonne of carbon] people would start to do things differently."

"Quite simply, the world is consuming too much energy and materials," said Luis Alberto Ferraté Felice, chair of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), as the 18th Session of the CSD took place in New York. "The 20 per cent of the population in the highest-income countries accounted for 77 per cent of total private consumption in 2005, while the poorest 20 [per cent] accounted for only 1.3 per cent," he observed. The new two-year cycle of the CSD will review five major themes: mining, chemicals, transport, a 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, and waste management.

Addressing the high-level segment of the conference, Asha-Rose Migiro, United Nations deputy secretary-general, called on participants to aim high. "We made plans and promises in Rio and Kyoto, in Johannesburg and here in New York at the turn of the Millennium. Let us keep the promises we have made to each another, and to our planet," she said. As the meeting ended, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called on participants to "accelerate momentum" in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. He also stressed the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries and communities.