2010 is International Year of Biodiversity

BirdLife is an official partner of International Year of Biodiversity Zoom In

“Birds and biodiversity is our business, our passion, our mission”, said Dr Marco Lambertini – BirdLife’s Chief Executive. “We’re working to build a future where people and nature can live in harmony”.

2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations – the year that celebrates the diversity of life on Earth, including every plant, animal and micro-organism.

The global campaign is being run by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat which was set up after the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Nearly 200 countries have now signed up to the Convention. In 2002, these countries promised to achieve a significant reduction of the rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level by 2010.

BirdLife Partners throughout the world have helped their governments to compile national biodiversity inventories, and to develop their biodiversity action plans.

“We ignore the decline of birds and other biodiversity at our own risk – they are the foundations of the functioning of the ecosystems”, added Dr Lambertini.

BirdLife is an official partner of International Year of Biodiversity

For BirdLife International, the world's largest partnership of conservation organisations, the International Year of Biodiversity is an important focus of attention on the failure of nations to meet their 2010 targets of halting rates of loss, while spotlighting the need for real and binding future targets. BirdLife sees the International Year of Biodiversity as a chance to celebrate all forms of life.

“BirdLife are a proud Partner of the International Year of Biodiversity”, noted Dr Lambertini.

In October 2010, there will be a Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya, Japan when each country will report back on progress made towards this target and make plans for the future. With its sound base in science, and the BirdLife Partnership's global repository of information on bird populations, BirdLife International is uniquely placed to comment and report on the state of biodiversity for the CBD.

The BirdLife Partnership is well placed to run activities to celebrate biodiversity. Many BirdLife Partners will undertake events and actions in 2010 in support of the International Year of Biodiversity ranging from formal education and public awareness programmes to festivals and events celebrating biodiversity.

BirdLife and the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership

BirdLife are also part of the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership - a global initiative to further develop and promote indicators for the consistent monitoring and assessment of biodiversity. The Partnership is a collaboration between many organisations and agencies developing global biodiversity indicators and is the leading source of information on trends in global biodiversity.

BirdLife are helping to develop a set of 22 biodiversity indicators which will be used to tracking progress toward the 2010 target and beyond. For more information, please click here.

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