UN Radio 12 Feb 10;
Over the past half century, human activities have caused an unprecedented decline in biological diversity. Two thousand ten is the International Year of Biodiversity. But what is biodiversity? Gerry Adams reports:
Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf : Biodiversity is life and without biodiversity, there is no life on earth. It's our food. It's our water. It's our forest, our fish. So without biodiversity, there is no life. So biodiversity is about our life and life on earth.
Narrator: Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international legally binding convention to sustain the diversity of life on earth. Noting that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, Dr. Djoghlaf says that we can no longer continue doing "business as usual" because the building blocks of biodiversity are being lost at an accelerated pace:
Djoghlaf: I think we have to have a paradigm shift in our relations as human beings with nature. We are only one species among millions of species and we are destroying the species. By the same token, destroying ourselves and destroying the capacity of the planet to sustain life for ourselves and our children.
Narrator: The UN Development Proramme, UNDP, notes that biodiversity underpins development through the provision of ecosystem "goods" like food, fibre and medicines and services such as crop pollination and the regulation of water supply. But, says Dr. Djoghlaf, we are destroying nature and natural resources as if they were going to be here forever:
Djoghlaf: The ecological footprint of the planet 1:10 is 20% higher than the capacity of the planet. If you had to have the same lifestyle as the Americans, we would need five planets. If you have to have the same lifestyle as the Europeans, we need three planets. And unfortunately, we have only one and we have to protect it.
Narrator: One way the loss of biodiversity is being addressed is through a project in Vietnam called the Phu My Lepironoia Project. The project, located in the Mekong Delta, continues to preserve the local biodiversity while at the same time supporting local livelihoods. Tran Triet, Director of the project, says the protection of biodiversity and the improvement of livelihoods can be mutually reinforcing:
Tran: There we are working on protecting a small wetland by creating a new model of management. It's an open protected area where local people are still allowed to harvest a wetland local plant that the local community has been harvesting for hundreds of years to make products from that raw material. What's different now is that the project has tem making better products from that same material, helps them to export their product. So instead of making very little money with exporting they can make a lot more money.
Narrator: Mr. Tran says the wetlands were able to be protected, the local community's livelihoods improved and the biological value of the wetlands improved tremendously. Mr. Tran say this project proves that biodiversity can be saved while at the same time improving people's livelihoods:
Tran: We don't have to sacrifice. We just need to put some thinking into the process to find a way we can get both achieved.
