looduskalender.ee

UN has proclaimed 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity or the richness of life year, to increase our awareness of the vital importance of biodiversity. Many important events, both international and local, will be arranged with nature and the protection of its richness as the central theme.

 

On February 5, the international Trondheim conference on biodiversity 2010, “2010 calls for new biodiversity targets” ended in Trondheim in Norway. Experts from all over the world met there and summarised the work done up to now to protect biodiversity.

 

From Estonia Lauri Klein attended the conference. Lauri Klein is responsible for biological diversity issues at the Estonian Environment Information Centre of the Ministry of the Environment. “At the conference it was pointed out that nations and people have made efforts in the name of preserving and re-establishing biodiversity. Unfortunately however, the desired results have not been achieved. The main threats to biodiversity are the destruction and fragmentation of habitats, changes in land use, overuse of natural resources, non-sustainable uses of nature (such as overfishing), introduction of foreign species, pollution and climatic changes”, Klein enumerated.

 

At the conference in Norway solutions were sought to the problems of how to minimize and stop the harm inflicted on nature before many ecosystems have changed irreversibly. “The participants at the conference underlined the importance of biodiversity in solving economical problems as well as those tied to climatic changes”, Klein said. One suggested solution was that the preservation of biodiversity should be one of the most important previsions to be observed in agriculture, fishery, energy production, transportation etc. Rapid action must be taken against destruction of forests, decrease of natural resources and invasion of foreign species. It was also stressed that nature resources must be valued as highly as economical.

 

This theme was also taken up at a conference in Madrid at the end of January this year. The central subjects were nature protection areas and green networks. At the conference Spain, as current presiding nation of EU, ceremonially declared the biodiversity year open, and also presented the European goals for preservation of biodiversity. One example is the aim to establish, until 2020, an adequate conservation status for species and habitats of all-European importance. From Estonia professor Mart Külvik from the Estonian University of Life Sciences participated.

 

The summit event of the Biodiversity year will be the 10th conference of the parties of the biodiversity convention in Nagoya, Japan. This conference, the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit, will set the principal directions for biodiversity after 2010 in global politics.

 

Estoniajoined the biological diversity convention in 1994, and celebrates the international biodiversity year together with all other nations in the world. This year is special for Estonian nature conservation: it is a hundred years since the creation of the first nature protection area. The year 2010 is thus the nature conservation year in Estonia, and the Ministry of Environment invites all to discover and appreciate the richness of life around us.

 

More information:

http://www.envir.ee/1111672 (in Estonian)

 

The official web site of the Year of Biodiversity:

http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/

 

The Estonian information clearinghouse for biological diversity, CBD-CHM

http://btv.eelis.ee

 

Home page of the Spanish conference:

http://www.fundacion-biodiversidad.es/europeanconference2010

 

Home page of the Trondheim conference:

http://www.trondheimconference.org/