Lyn Resurreccion, Business Mirror 25 Oct 09;
SINGAPORE—Climate change is one of the significant causes of biodiversity loss. But, at the same time, biodiversity has an important role in mitigating and adapting to climate change, a diplomat said at the recent Asean Conference on Biodiversity 2009 in Singapore late last week.
Ambassador Holger Standertskjöld, head of the delegation of the European Commission to Singapore, said climate change is one of the biggest environmental, social and economic threats facing the Earth today. It impacts on biodiversity and is one of the causes of biodiversity loss and exacerbates other pressures.
However, “biodiversity and ecosystem services play a fundamental role to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its effects.”
“Coral reefs and mangroves provide natural shoreline protection from storm and flooding. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems currently absorb half of anthropogenic carbon-dioxide emissions. This means climate change will accelerate further if biodiversity and ecosystems are not effectively protected,” Standertskjöld said.
Biodiversity, he said, is important for all human beings because at least 40 percent of the world’s economy and 80 percent of the needs of the poor come from biological resources.
“Biodiversity benefits people through more than just its contribution to material welfare and livelihoods,” he said, noting that it contributes to security, resilience against climate change, social relations, health, and freedom of choices and actions.
“We are stewards of a wonderful natural legacy that we need to pass on intact to future generations. But, sadly, biodiversity loss continues at alarming rates, with serious potential consequences for sustainable livelihoods and sustainable economic growth,” Standertskjöld said.
Southeast Asia is one of biodiversity hot spots
Southeast Asia is one of the Earth’s most important biodiversity hot spots, he said. In the region, 1 percent of its forest cover is lost annually—four times higher than the world average. While in the Philippines alone, more than 150 species are endangered.
Rodrigo Fuentes, executive director of the Asean Center for Biodiversity (ACB), which led the holding of the conference, said in a speech in the same event that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) “impressive and dramatic progress” in the last 50 years came with a “stiff price” in terms of the loss of biodiversity resources.
“We are losing our biodiversity resources and dramatically altering our ecosystems at unprecedented rates,” Fuentes said.
Out of the 64,800 known species in the region, he said 1,313 are endangered, 80 percent of coral reefs are at risk, and deforestation rates are at least twice higher than in higher tropical areas.
“We have narrowed the genetic range of our endemic foods through agricultural intensification, and concentrated the production systems to varieties and species of food that have short rotation,” Fuentes said at the conference, with the theme “Biodiveristy in focus: 2010 and beyond.”
Harvard professor Dr. Aaron Benstein, the conference keynote speaker, said the world’s rich biodiversity has been the source of drugs, but its continued loss has already began to seriously affect human health, such as the occurrence of new infectious diseases.
Standertskjöld said causes of biological diversity loss include extensive deforestation and habitat loss; widespread conversion of land for agriculture; population growth; introduction of invasive species and trafficking in animals.
Deforestation contributes to global warming
He said tropical deforestation is one of the big sources of the greenhouse-gas emissions that are causing global warming, which must be addressed by the global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December.
Standertskjöld said the EC proposes that the future global climate agreement should aim to reduce the total forested area lost in the tropics by at least half of current levels by 2020, and then to halt global forest-cover loss completely by 2030 at the latest.
To provide incentives to developing countries in their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation, he said the EC has suggested the creation of an international financing mechanism, the Global Forest Carbon Mechanism, which could become the pilot for “Global Ecosystem Carbon Mechanism[s].”
“Ecosystem-based approaches for adaptation and mitigation have the potential for multiple benefits. They can contribute to biodiversity conservation, combating climate change and poverty reduction,” he said.
Access to genetic resources
Standertskjöld said one of the top objectives of the Convention of Biodiversity is the sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way.
He said benefit-sharing is linked to access to genetic resources, the transfer of relevant technologies, information exchange and scientific cooperation. The issue of access and benefit-sharing has been the subject of the European Commission Communication on how to implement the Bonn Guidelines.
A network for access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing has also been established in Europe, to raise awareness of the users’ obligations under the Convention of Biodiversity, he said.
Economics of biodiversity
Standertskjöld said the European Commission, together with Germany and several other partners, have jointly initiated a global study, named “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity.”
The study is evaluating the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the associated decline in ecosystem services worldwide, and comparing them with the costs of effective conservation and sustainable use. The final results will be presented at the Conference of Parties of the Convention of Biodiversity in 2010 in Nagoya, Japan.
Asean initiatives to conserve biodiversity
Standertskjöld acknowledged that Southeast Asian and other governments in the world have increasingly recognized biodiversity conservation as extremely important for human development.
He noted that the governments in the Asean have taken measures to preserve their biodiversity resources, one of which is the creation of the ACB.
The EC, in acknowledging the importance of the ACB, signed a financing agreement with the Asean in April 2005 granting a contribution of €6 million to support the creation of the ACB, Standertskjöld said.
He recognized that the creation of ACB has enhanced policy collaboration on biodiversity in the Asean region to strengthen the institutional capacity on regional and global biodiversity issues and boosted public awareness of biodiversity values and conservation needs.
Standertskjöld said the EU has been involved in efforts to protect the natural heritage in Southeast Asia in the past 20 years through programs and projects, such as promotion of community-based forest management; strengthening protected areas policies and legislation; biodiversity research; agricultural diversification; and marine conservation, among others.
EU initiatives
In the last 25 years the EU countries have built up a vast network of over 26,000 protected areas covering all the EU member-states and a total area of around 850,000 square kilometer, representing more than 20 percent of total EU territory, he said. The sites, known as the Natura 2000 Network—the largest coherent network of protected areas in the world—shows the importance that EU citizens attach to biodiversity, he said.
As a global leader on environmental issues, and being committed to contribute to a significant reduction in the worldwide rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, he said, the EU, in 2006, through its communication on “Halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010—and beyond” reaffirmed the need to enhance funding earmarked for biodiversity and to strengthen measures to mainstream biodiversity in development assistance.
An EU Biodiversity Action Plan accompanied this communication, he said.
Standertskjöld said the EU acknowledged that “we are unlikely to meet our target to halt biodiversity loss in the EU by 2010,” even as targeted measures under EU nature legislation have proven capable of reversing the declining trends of species and habitats of EU conservation concern.
“But even if the biodiversity targets are missed, this must not mean that we should give up or slow our efforts. Quite the opposite: by stepping up our efforts we can replicate the successes we have already achieved on a larger scale,” he said. “Political leaders have to make ‘unprecedented efforts’ to significantly reduce current rates of global biodiversity loss by 2010, and bring us as close to the 2010 target as possible.”
He said the EU continues to place international biodiversity high on its agenda and aims to develop between now and the spring of 2010 its own key strategic principles regarding the objectives to attain beyond 2010.
“This will be the one of the EU’s contributions to the international debate which should aim at agreeing upon the future Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity and a vision for biodiversity beyond 2010,” Standertskjöld said.
