Human efforts to protect wildlife and nature are not up the mark to achieve the goal by 2020, suggests a United Nations (UN) report.
The population of wild animals as well as their natural habitat is on the decline. The conservation efforts by many governments to protect many species from getting extinct are not good enough by reveals UN's Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 report.
The UN pushed a biodiversity plan with the aim to encourage governments to put more efforts to conserve biodiversity. The plan included 53 goals to protect nature but only 5 of them are on or before target.
Governments across the world are on track for setting aside about 17 percent of the Earth's land capacity by 2020 in protected regions for wildlife like parks and reserves. However, risk of extinction for many birds, amphibians, animals as well as coral still remains. Ocean temperatures are already rising across the world that poses a great threat to coral reefs. The report reiterates the global importance of preserving biodiversity on the Earth.
"Biodiversity is a cornerstone of developed and developing economies. Without healthy concentrations of biodiversity, livelihoods, ecosystem services, natural habitats, and food security can be severely compromised," says [pdf] Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director.
Ban Ki-moon, UN's Secretary-General, urged governments to double their efforts to conserve biodiversity. The latest report estimates that the world will need to spend $150 billion to $440 billion each year to achieve the 2020 target and ensure biodiversity of plants and animals. The current spending is about $50 billion, which is mainly used to setup or guard protected wildlife regions.
The report also urged international businesses to support the efforts to conserve biodiversity. Several big enterprises reject to be accountable for the impact on the planet's environment due to their supply chain.
The report Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 report also highlighted the importance of farming and the reduction in the use of fertilizers. Excess fertilizers usually drain rivers, which in turn pollutes them and affects the marine life. The report also emphasized the need to reduce incentives on felling of trees in tropical forests such as in Indonesia and in the Congo basin.
The UN urges the governments to take stricter actions to limit the stress on nature by the preservation of biodiversity.
