Environment and Consumer

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variety and variability of nature including genetic species and ecosystems. Preserving and enhancing biodiversity is crucial to plant, animal and human life.

The EU's Habitats Directive created an ecological network of special protected areas, known as Natura 2000. The conservation of natural habitats and wild fauna and flora includes monitoring and surveillance, reintroduction of native species, introduction of non-native species, research and education.

John Bowis visited the Regional Office for Europe of IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and learnt about the Countdown 2010 campaign (January 2005).

The goal of Countdown 2010 is that all European governments, at every level, have taken the necessary actions to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010.

Biodiversity faces multiple challenges in Europe. In the west, habitat loss and fragmentation through agricultural practices, urban growth and transport networks are the primary threats. In the east, the main threats include the intensification of farming and forestry and the illegal harvesting of flora and fauna. Many species, including once common domestic breeds, are in decline. As biodiversity is lost, the quality of human life in Europe is increasingly at risk. Recognising the major threats that these trends pose to their citizens, European governments have committed themselves to a series of global and regional agreements aimed at halting the loss of biodiversity. They range from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the Millennium Development Goals to the Kyiv Biodiversity Commitments of Eurasian Environment Ministers and the targets agreed by European Union biodiversity stakeholders at their Malahide meeting in 2004. These are serious commitments, made in good faith by European governments. But all of European society must join together if these commitments are to be fulfilled and the loss of biodiversity is to be halted.

The objectives of Countdown 2010 are to encourage and support the full implementation of all the laws and binding international commitments on halting biodiversity loss that European governments have signed.

Using an annual ‘scorecard’ or 2010 biodiversity barometer, it will report on the progress being made in fulfilling these commitments. It will develop a Red List of threatened species in Europe.

Information on European Commission website about the protection of nature and biodiversity.