Biodiversity
What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity, first coined in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, can be defined simply as the variety of life on earth. This includes the variety within species, between species and between ecosystems.
Biodiversity is inextricably linked with the health of our planet, including climate change, the population’s health and sustainable development. The necessity to conserve, enhance and manage for biodiversity is therefore very important. However, despite International legislation to meet targets set to alleviate the loss of this important resource, it is widely recognised that these targets are far from being met.
“It is sobering to realise that we are still far from meeting the EU commitment to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010, and from the global commitment to significantly reduce the worldwide rate of biodiversity loss by 2010”.
Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for the Environment (2005)