2010 Biodiversity Safeguard in Oceans

Forewords The United Nations proclaimed 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. The Program will take action in 2010 and beyond, under the label: “Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life”. In 2002, world leaders agreed to substantially reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. It has been called the “2010 Biodiversity Target”, finalized “to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth” (Ban Ki-Moon). Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, states that “We rely on the diversity of life to provide us with the food, fuel, medicine and other essentials we 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.