Loss of species hits economy; new U.N. goals needed
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Fri Feb 5, 2010 1:31pm EST OSLO (Reuters) – Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday. Losses of biodiversity “have increasingly dangerous consequences for human well-being, even survival for some societies,” according to a summary of a 90-nation U.N. backed conference in Norway from February 1-5. The United Nations says that the world is facing the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, driven by a rising human population and spinoffs such as pollution, expanding cities and global warming. Damage to coral reefs in the tropics, creeping desertification in Africa or felling of the Amazon rainforest were among threats to wildlife and so to human livelihoods. “Many more economic sectors than we realize depend on biodiversity,” the co-chairs of the conference said in their summary. … A U.N. summit in 2002 set a goal of a “significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity” by 2010. The United Nations says the world has failed. …
