Human activity causes the destruction of the natural world. This is an unfortunate and potentially disastrous fact. It is not, however, inevitable. Even in as little as the last 40 years, the diversity of life on earth has collapsed in on itself. There are significantly fewer species of plants and animals in the world than there were in 1970 and there are fewer examples of those species that remain. Maintaining biodiversity is crucial to maintaining life on the planet. All living things are so interdependent that the loss of one can easily cause the loss of another. With so many people dependent on the survival of the plants and animals around us, we must recognise that we play the crucial role in conserving biological diversity on earth.

“The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.” Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmental and political activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

The United Nations Environment Programme has declared 2010 the Year of Biodviersity in an effort to raise awareness of the destruction to the natural world caused by human activity. They launched the campaign with a speech by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in which he said

“A wide variety of environmental goods and services that we take for granted are under threat, with profound and damaging consequences for ecosystems, economies and livelihoods,”

The campaign has identified 4 key messages:

1. Humans are part of nature and have the power to protect and to destroy it
2. Maintaining biodiversity is essential for sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on
3. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate; but we can prevent this loss
4. We have made some achievements to safeguard biodiversity but we need to do much more and we must act urgently

Check out the UN Environment Programme Year of Biodiversity website