Biodiversity: the rock on which you stand
2010, the Year of Biodiversity is our chance to get real about nature. We need real accounting to ensure that the value of biodiversity is recognised, real funding for nature conservation, and real protection for the most threatened and important places in Earth.
See the bigger picture
You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places they live and their surrounding environments, all over the world.
You rely on this diversity of life to provide you with the food, fuel, medicine and other essentials you simply cannot live without. Yet this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated rate because of human activities.
This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on which we depend, to resist growing threats such as climate change.
This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on which we depend, to resist growing threats such as climate change.
International Year of Biodiversity
The United Nations proclaimed 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity, and people all over the world are working to safeguard this irreplaceable natural wealth and reduce biodiversity loss.
This is vital for current and future human wellbeing.
Yet we need to do more.
This is vital for current and future human wellbeing.
Yet we need to do more.
The International Year of Biodiversity is a unique opportunity to increase understanding of the vital role that biodiversity plays in sustaining life on Earth, and to stop the loss.
The question is will we?
2010 is our chance to prove we will.
When we say we want to save the planet, we use the word "biodiversity" to encompass this entire concept - which, granted, is a big one.
Biodiversity: Life, the world, the variation of life for the entire globe.
It’s a big idea with a long history.
Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, the product of four billion years of evolution.
But the word “Biodiversity” itself is actually quite new.
"Biodiversity" was coined as a contraction of "biological diversity" in 1985.
Clever eh?
A symposium in 1986, and the follow-up book BioDiversity (Wilson 1986), edited by biologist E. O. Wilson, carved the way for common acceptance of the word and concept.
And as politicians, scientists, and conservationists became more interested in the state of the planet and the amazing complexity of life we became quite attached to this new word.
And why were we talking so much about Biodiversity?
Simple.
The world has begun, relatively recently, to lose species and habitats at an ever-increasing and alarming rate.
Why?
Because of us.
The question is will we?
2010 is our chance to prove we will.
When we say we want to save the planet, we use the word "biodiversity" to encompass this entire concept - which, granted, is a big one.
Biodiversity: Life, the world, the variation of life for the entire globe.
It’s a big idea with a long history.
Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, the product of four billion years of evolution.
But the word “Biodiversity” itself is actually quite new.
"Biodiversity" was coined as a contraction of "biological diversity" in 1985.
Clever eh?
A symposium in 1986, and the follow-up book BioDiversity (Wilson 1986), edited by biologist E. O. Wilson, carved the way for common acceptance of the word and concept.
And as politicians, scientists, and conservationists became more interested in the state of the planet and the amazing complexity of life we became quite attached to this new word.
And why were we talking so much about Biodiversity?
Simple.
The world has begun, relatively recently, to lose species and habitats at an ever-increasing and alarming rate.
Why?
Because of us.
