Photo of Stag Beetle by Luisa Romeo, Sawfish courtesy of NT Environment Centre. Photo of Leadbeaters Possum by Esther Beaton. Golden Shouldered Parrot Photograph by, courtesy and © of C & D Frith. Montane Fen photo by Chris Taylor.
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Background to the Biodiversity Summit 2009
In 2006, the first Biodiversity
Summit, in Melbourne, focused on the global extinction crisis: whether Australia was likely
to meet its 2010 target under the Biodiversity Convention (to reduce
the rate of biodiversity loss significantly), and whether
Australia’s legal and institutional tools to protect biodiversity
were working. The
dominant themes were the relentless loss of biodiversity and our
failure to respond effectively.
This second Biodiversity Summit will concentrate
on the connections between biodiversity and climate. At the global level, this
link has been made through work commissioned by the Convention on Biological
Diversity. In Australia, understanding
of the contibution of biodiverse natural ecosystems to climate
change mitigation and adaptation is tenuous at best and not
reflected at all in current government policy processes dealing with
biodiversityBiodiversity
is the living fabric of the planet – the diversity of ecosystems,
species and genes which make up life on earth.
Australia has a special responsibility as one of 17
mega-diverse countries that collectively hold about 70% of the
world’s plants and animals. We have more endemic animal species than any other country.
We are
also unique in spanning an entire continent and its surrounding seas
within one political jurisdiction.
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