Naujienos

Hundreds of scientists have called for greater efforts world-wide to understand and safeguard global biodiversity at a major conference in Paris that ended on Friday. The "Paris declaration" on biodiversity urges establishment of a new "international mechanism" to improve knowledge, identify political priorities and inform parties to the UN biodiversity convention.

The meeting was organised by the UN agency Unesco and opened by French president Jacques Chirac. It follows a global commitment at the Johannesburg sustainability summit in 2002 to reduce biodiversity loss significantly by 2010 (ED 04/09/02). The EU recently reaffirmed its commitment to halt biodiversity losses by this date (ED 25/05/04).

Biodiversity conservation needs to become an integral part of economic development, the declaration says. This will require new social, economic, institutional and legal frameworks, it goes on, for example to take into account the multiple values of biodiversity. Governments have known this for over a decade, yet "threats to biodiversity have clearly increased without a significant and effective response", it warns.

Follow-up: See conference website, Unesco web pages. See also speeches by Jacques Chirac and EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas.