Participants at the two-week meeting, held under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), called for a better network and expansion of existing protected areas to halt biodiversity loss. Germany, the host of the conference, launched its 'Life Web' initiative – which includes an initial fund of 500 million euro up to 2012 and 500 million a year after that to finance protected areas around the world.
According to the CBD, the world is losing plants and species at 100 to 1,000 times the natural rate of extinction, leading to a smaller pool of genetic resources.
The measures approved at the conference to tackle this issue included an agreement on a process to establish rules for the fair sharing of genetic resources. So far only voluntary guidelines exist. The agreement would deal with sensitive issues including the sovereign rights of states over natural resources and the protection of the rights of indigenous and local communities over their traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.
Countries believed biofuels could have "positive contributions", but warned that the sustainable production of biofuels depended on methods of production and agricultural techniques used.
The outcome of the conference was applauded by Ahmed Djoghlaf, the executive secretary of CBD, who believed the "agreements, if implemented expeditiously by all stakeholders, will go a long way to help us meet our goals [of reducing biodiversity loss by 2010]".
Environment Commissioner Dimas was happy with the positive outcome of the conference saying countries had "reached a milestone in protecting our biodiversity by finally putting our commitments into concrete actions".
But environmental groups slammed the conclusions of the conference, saying it did not go far enough and blamed industry for having too big a say. The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) blamed a group of five countries (Brazil, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and Japan) for allowing industry to have "alarming influence" on decisions in the CBD.
Sandy Gauntlett, the chairman of the Pacific Indigenous Peoples Coalition, noted that industry is "playing an increasingly larger role in commodifying the planet's environmental resources". In fact, a member of the Brazilian delegation was from ArborGen, a major R&D company specialising in genetically engineered trees.
"This is not a step ahead but a huge step backwards," said Dr. Miguel Lovera, chairperson of GFC.
While Lovera was pleased to see the CBD acknowledged that "climate mitigation projects can be detrimental to forests and at least requests more research on these issues," he lamented the fact that the continued expansion of biofuels was not prevented. Dr. Rachel Smolker, a leading researcher with the Global Justice Ecology Project agreed, saying the CBD were "apparently unaware of the litany of documented adverse impacts of biofuels on biodiversity, food and climate".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon incorporated the 2010 biodiversity target into the Millennium Development Goals in 2007 and announced that 2010 will be the International Year for Biodiversity. The next CBD conference will be held in Nagoya, Japan in 2010.
