UNESCO Venice - Interview with Prof Pier Luigi Nimis, University of Trieste

When asked:

How does biodiversity and internet interact? Prof. Nimis affirms that "in the past the main problem was finding information on organisms, animals and plants was difficult. One had to go to a library and get books; they were difficult to find and read. Today, it is much easier. If you know the name of an organism, a plant, or an animal search on Google and an enormous amount of related information will be found."

Happy Anniversary to UNESCO Natural Science Programs

UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

The United States was instrumental in the creation of both of these programs of UNESCO's Natural Science Sector.

Opposition to U.S. missile defense installation on Korean bioreserve island

Source: "Unwanted Missiles for a Korean Island", By CHRISTINE AHN, The New York Times, August 5, 2011

Jeju Island Bioreserve

Jeju Island, the largest island off the Korean coast, is a volcanic island with a shield volcano that rises to 1950 meters above sea level. The Biosphere Reserve is located at the center of the island. A diversity of ecosystems are represented in the biosphere reserve, e.g. montane coniferous forest, temperate deciduous hardwood forest, warm-temperate evergreen hardwood forest and temperate grasslands.

I quote from the NYT article:

Gangjeong, a small fishing and farming village on Jeju Island 50 miles south of the Korean peninsula, is a pristine Unesco-designated ecological reserve where elderly Korean women sea divers, haenyo, still forage for seafood. It is also the site of a fierce resistance movement by villagers who oppose the construction of a South Korean naval base on the island that will become part of the U.S. missile defense system to contain China. 

South Korea’s president, Lee Myungbak, says the base is needed to protect Seoul from an attack from Pyongyang. The problem with that assertion is that the Aegis destroyers that Lee pledged to deploy at the base aren’t designed to protect South Korea from North Korean Taepodong ballistic missiles (TBM). 

In a 1999 report to the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon verified that the Aegis system “could not defend the northern two-thirds of South Korea against the low flying short range TBMs.” 

Thus, instead of protecting South Koreans, the militarization of Jeju Island will introduce new security threats to the country by fueling an arms race in an increasingly tense region of unresolved conflicts. The naval base on Jeju Island will equip South Koreans and their American allies with the capability to strike long-range ballistic missile batteries in southeast China that target Japan or Taiwan. Washington sees this base as a central pillar to its defense system in the Asia-Pacific region. China, no doubt, sees it as a new threat.

UNESCO Releases Report of Expert Meeting

UNESCO) has released the outcome of the meeting on the future of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), held , in Paris, France on 10 June 2011. The meeting’s outcome calls for representation of key stakeholders and recommends elements of a knowledge generation strategy. Read more....

© Joly Carlos IPBES Experts Meeting, UNESCO, Paris, 10 June 2011

For life, for the future - Biosphere reserves and climate change, a collection of good practice case studies

UNESCO has released a publication that demonstrates, through a selection of 28 case studies from around the world, that UNESCO biosphere reserves are ideal places to test, evaluate and implement comprehensive climate change policies.

The publication underlines that while climate change is the dominant challenge to sustainable development, it is not the only challenge. It underscores that none of the other well-known challenges to sustainability has disappeared, including poverty, malnutrition, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functions, demographic change, desertification, water scarcity, urbanization, an altered nitrogen cycle, pollution, etc., and argues that any isolated policy implementation focusing only on climate change "is likely to do more harm than good." One of the report's main messages is that UNESCO biosphere reserves around the globe can be suitable places for testing or implementing new, comprehensive policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation, once all other variables need to be included into the equation.

Happy Birthday MAB

2011 marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program. Among planned activities is a web-based forum, in which various dimensions and activities of MAB will be addressed. The idea is to encourage contributions on what has been learned over the last four decades – what has worked and what has not worked, and why.

The MAB Program was conceived, planned and launched some four decades ago. It is science-based, with multiple stakeholders and constituencies. It combines research, education and training, demonstration and the synthesis of information for different audiences. It involves cooperation at nested scales – local, sub-national, national, regional and global. It seeks to combine "philosophical visions" and innovative concepts with collaborative problem-solving work in selected parts of the biosphere where people live and work. It is firmly based on national priorities and efforts.

The overall objective is to reconcile the conservation of biological diversity with socio-economic needs and cultural integrity – in short, sustainable development. Today, the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) includes 563 biosphere reserves in 110 countries worldwide.

The United States was an early and active member of MAB and entered some 50 locations in the worldwide network of biosphere reserves. Scientists working in those reserves were active in exchanging information with their colleagues working in reserves in other countries and in building the scientific capacity of the network. When the United States withdrew from UNESCO, for a number of years the Congress appropriated funds to the State Department to continue U.S. scientific cooperation with MAB. However, in later years not only were those contributions no longer provided, but the U.S. National Committee for MAB was disbanded and the State Department stopped participating in MAB activities. The U.S. National Commission for UNESCO has recommended that the United States return to full involvement in MAB, and it is hoped that the Congress will soon support that reengagement.

One of the U.S. Biosphere Reserves

Session of the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program

31 May – 4 June 2010

UNESCO Headquarters, Fontenoy Building, Room XII

The 22nd session of the International Coordinating Council of the MAB Programme (MAB-ICC) is being held from 31 May to 4 June 2010 at UNESCO Headquarters. The MAB-ICC is reviewing progress made in the implementation of the Madrid Action Plan adopted at its 20th session and is discussing various matters concerning the future of MAB; important decisions, on new sites to UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves as well as on MAB Young Scientists Awards and the Michel Batisse Award for Biosphere Reserve Management will be made by the Council.

Documents for the 22nd MAB-ICC session

National Reports received for the 22nd session of the MAB-ICC

Introductory speeches

Biodiversity Is Our Life

I quote at length from the editorial by Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in Science magazine of 5 March 2010.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, in recognition of life on Earth. Eight years ago, more than 190 countries agreed, through the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010. This October, the Convention will meet in Nagoya, Japan, to evaluate progress and agree on new biodiversity targets for the world. Shortly before that, the UN General Assembly will address the biodiversity crisis for the first time.

It is clear from many indices of biodiversity that the world has failed to meet the 2010 target. For example, in its Red List of Threatened Species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature documents the extinction risk of 47,677 species: 17,291 are threatened, including 12% of birds, 21% of mammals, 30% of amphibians, 27% of reef-building corals, and 35% of conifers and cycads. Tracking extinction risk over time through this index reveals even worse news, with dramatic declines in many groups, notably amphibians and corals. The Living Planet Index reveals that populations of wild species have declined by 30% since 1970; mangrove forests have lost a fifth of their area since 1980, and 29% of seagrass beds are gone.

This biodiversity loss has grim consequences for humanity. According to The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study in 2009, half the welfare of the world's 1.1 billion poorest people flows directly from nature, through benefits including wild harvest, crop pollination, disaster mitigation, clean water provision, and maintenance of traditional cultures. The study estimates the total global annual economic cost of biodiversity loss, where it can be measured, to be between 1.35 and 3.1 trillion U.S. dollars. In addition, destruction of tropical forests (shrinking by 6 million hectares each year) is responsible for nearly a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, driving climate change. Biodiversity loss deprives our descendants of currently unknown but potentially vast benefits. And in the sense that it cuts off humanity from the wonders of nature, the loss ultimately makes us less human.

UNESCO will be observing the International Year of Biodiversity, and its program titled People, Biodiversity and Ecology seeks to create an international network for the study of the natural sciences underlying biodiversity and how people can live in such a way as to conserve biodiversity.

Lagoa das Furnas - Azores

Photo: Arnaud Mader, © UNESCO

UC Davis helping Biosphere Reserve in Uruguay

Shore birds at Uruguay's Eastern Biosphere Reserve

University of California, Davis, scientists are helping rice farmers in Uruguay stop polluting their waterways -- including drinking-water sources and a globally valuable nature reserve.

With funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, the UC Davis researchers helped Uruguayan university colleagues devise a simple water test that tells whether it is safe to drain flooded rice fields.

The test checks for the herbicide clomazone, which is used on 78 percent of Uruguay's rice fields.

Developing best rice-farming practices to avoid release of toxic chemicals to the environment is especially urgent in Uruguay, because water drained from the country's main area of rice cultivation flows into the marshlands of the Eastern Biosphere Reserve (Reserva de Biosfera Humedales del Este). This reserve is managed as part of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve Program, which promotes environmentally sustainable human development.

Read more!

Museum of Biodiversity to Open in Panama

The Museum of Biodiversity is to be opened in Panama this year, in a spectacular building designed by Architect Frank Gehry. The Museum will be an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. This year is also:

• the celebration of the centennial of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and
• the International Year of Biodiversity

The Smithsonian has long provided global leadership in the science of biodiversity and it is quite appropriate that it is supporting the creation of this spectacular new facility in a country in which it has had so long and importance a scientific presence.

UNESCO is joining the Convention on Biological Diversity, the lead UN body for the IYB, to make the IYB an effective instrument to advance the cause of biodiversity conservation. During the Year, UNESCO will lead several activities which aim to educate and to raise public awareness on the reasons for conserving biodiversity, to fill the gaps in our knowledge of biodiversity and to catalyze further international action for its sustainable use.

The United States has been little involved in UNESCO's important programs dealing with the science of Biodiversity since Representative Don Young of Arkansas put a hold on U.S. participation in such programs in the late 1990s.

This is the year to renew and reaffirm U.S. commitment to international collaboration on the science of biodiversity, and especially to UNESCO's program titled "People, Biodiversity and Ecology".

John Daly

The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for UNESCO.

UNESCO Meeting on Biodiversity

Source: Maxims News Network, February 4, 2010

"Concern about the unprecedented erosion of biodiversity was discussed at the event organized at United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters recently by high-level participants including Irina Bokova, the new UNESCO Director-General; Davidson Hepburn, Chairperson of UNESCO General Conference; Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); Jochen Flashbarth, President of the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties (COP 9) to the CBD; Monique Barbut, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of the Global Biodiversity Facility (GEF) and Angel Cropper, Deputy Executive Director the the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

"There was a unanimous conclusion of all the participants that halting the unprecedented erosion of biodiversity and raising awareness of the need to change our behaviour are urgent priorities.

"The Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, declared in a video message at the opening of the meeting that, 'We must not be discouraged by the outcomes' of the UN Climate Change Conference last December in Copenhagen."

Read more!

February 2nd is World Wetlands Day

Laguna Hedionda, Los Lípez Ramsar site, Bolivia (Photo Omar Rocha)

Best wishes to the Secretariat for the Ramsar Convention (Convention on Wetlands of International Importance) on World Wetlands Day, celebrating the 39th anniversary of the its adoption. The Ramsar Convention is a site-based intergovernmental treaty which encourages countries to identify and manage specific places so that their values and benefits are protected for future generations. It is the only global environmental treaty that deals with a particular ecosystem.

World Heritage and Ramsar sites are commonly associated throughout the world. Some notable examples include Brazil's immense Pantanal wetlands, the Sundarbans mangrove forests of Bangladesh, the Tubbataha National Marine Park in the Philippines and the Danube Delta in Romania.

UNESCO is the Depository of the Ramsar Convention. UNESCO and Ramsar join efforts to preserve important sites.

"UK meeting aims for new global biodiversity deal"

Source: Richard Black, BBC News, 18 January 2010.

Ingredients of a new deal on protecting global biodiversity are likely to be decided this week at a London meeting.

About 55 nations are sending delegates to the meeting, which will be chaired by UK and Brazilian ministers.

A key aim is to agree what sort of targets should be set at October's UN biodiversity summit for curbing the loss of species and ecosystems.

UNESCO is celebrating 2010, the United Nations Year of Biodiversity, and has an important program on People, Biodiversity and Ecology. Notable within this program is the world network of 553 bioreserves which has developed under UNESCO encouragement. The network provides a global mechanism for research and the development of the understanding needed to preserve biodiversity.

Editorial Comment: Unfortunately, the Bush administration withdrew U.S. support for the the participation of American scientists and U.S. bioreserves in the global network. The U.S. National Commission has recommended that the participation be restarted, and that remains a challenge for the new team appointed by the Obama administration. 2010, the Year of Biodiversity, would seem to require action on this recommendation.
John Daly
(The opinions expressed above are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

Africa Analysis: A level playing field for biodiversity

Source: Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net, 22 December 2009

In 2010, the UN's International Year of Biodiversity, the world is expected to agree new goals for preserving species.

The Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), scheduled for late October next year in Nagoya, Japan, will also try to establish an international framework for ensuring more equitable access to, and sharing of, genetic resources.

But like many regions, Africa is already certain to fail to "achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss" — the last CBD target set in 2002. Scientists say extinction rates are accelerating rather than slowing down and biodiversity-rich areas such as Africa are particularly vulnerable to the decline.

Will new targets for 2020 be any more achievable?

Read more of the article!

Comment from the editor: UNESCO can play a key roll in the next few months helping African nations to plan for the October meeting, and indeed in participating in the International Year for Biodiversity and preparing for the long term effort needed to preserve and protect African biodiversity.

It is especially important that the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO revive and support the U.S. committee for the UNESCO's People, Biodiversity and Ecology Program. The U.S. scientific community working in the field of biodiversity is the world's strongest, and UNESCO needs its active participation to achieve what is must in this important endeavor. JAD

Image source

International Year of Biodiversity 2010

The United Nations has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. The year is to be a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity.

UNESCO joins the Convention on Biological Diversity, the lead UN body and other UN, international and national partners to make the IYB an effective instrument to advance the cause of biodiversity conservation. During the Year, UNESCO will lead several activities which aim to educate and to raise public awareness on the reasons for conserving biodiversity, to fill the gaps in our knowledge of biodiversity and to catalyze further international action for its sustainable use.

Related links

UNESCO and IYB

Events and activities

• Inaugural event
• UNESCO IYB biodiversity science-policy conference (Registration Form)
• IYB travelling exhibition

Resource materials

UNESCO and biodiversity

Official IYB website

Official IYB Calendar

Join IYB community

International Year of Biodiversity 2010

The UN-declared International Year of Biodiversity marks the 2010 Biodiversity Target aiming to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by this date.

UNESCO joins the Convention on Biological Diversity, the lead UN body and other UN, international and national partners to make the IYB an effective instrument to advance the cause of biodiversity conservation. During the Year, UNESCO will lead several activities which aim to educate and to raise public awareness on the reasons for conserving biodiversity, to fill the gaps in our knowledge of biodiversity and to catalyze further international action for its sustainable use.

Related links

• UNESCO and IYB
• Events and activities
  • Inaugural event
  • UNESCO IYB biodiversity science-policy conference
  • IYB travelling exhibition
  • International conference on cultural and biological diversity
  • Biodiversity learning kit
• Resource materials
• UNESCO and biodiversity
• Official IYB website
• Official IYB Calendar

Editorial: The United States Has to Revive Participation in the Global Network of Bioreserves

The saola, a species discovered in 1992
never seen in the wild by a scientist
down to a couple of hundred
or perhaps a couple of dozen animals
no one knows which!

A recent editorial in Science magazine by Harold Mooney and Georgina Mace states:

Global responses to the deterioration of biodiversity have been slow to emerge, but next month the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme hosts a meeting* in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss the next steps in establishing a new science/policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services.The response in this arena still lags far behind negotiations related to climate change, but the meeting is a chance to boost international action, based on strong scientific evidence. An important motivation for creating this interface is meeting the goals of international multilateral agreements, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Unlike the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these environmental conventions lack a pre-convention science assessment and have no provision for subsequent government-endorsed, independent science. The meeting in Nairobi will debate, among other issues, how best to make up for this crucial omission.

Why is a robust biodiversity science/policy interface so important? The human population continues to mine the natural capital of Earth to support its growth, but the impact of this loss on human well-being is not widely understood in either public or policy spheres. Biodiversity is the building block of ecosystems that capture carbon and energy and cycle water and nutrients from the soil. These processes, and the structure of ecosystems that control them, benefit society with food, fuel, clean water, and climate regulation—so-called ecosystem services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), supported by UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations, concluded in 2005 that 60% of ecosystem services worldwide have become degraded, mostly in the past 50 years, primarily because of land-and ocean-use practices.

We lack information on global and local trends in most biodiversity components at the level of genes, species, and ecosystems, as well as baselines and standards for their assessment. We will certainly miss the CBD's target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and also miss the 2015 environmental targets within the UN Millennium Development Goals to improve health and livelihoods for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Changes in ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that an area of tropical rainforest greater than the size of California has been destroyed since 1992, mostly for food and fuel. Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to increase.

The UNESCO program on People, Biodiversity & Ecology is an important part of the world scientific community's organization to understand biodiversity and how it may be protected. Specifically,UNESCO has created the World Network of Biosphere Reserves which innovate and demonstrate approaches to conservation and sustainable development. They are of course under national sovereign jurisdiction, yet share their experience and ideas nationally, regionally and internationally. There are 553 sites that have been added to this network by the governments of the countries in which they occur, including 49 that were added to the network by the United States in the early days of the program. (The United States was very much involved in the network in its early days, and was indeed influential in its conception.)


U.S. scientists remained involved in the UNESCO program even after the United States had left UNESCO, and indeed the State Department included funds in its budget to support such involvement for a number of years. However, participation dropped off and reached a nader during the Bush administration even as the United States returned to membership in UNESCO. It is now time to restore U.S. participation in the program. Perhaps most important is for U.S. scientists involved in ecosystems approaches to protecting biodiversity to return to full scientific participation with their peers in the other 106 countries with bioreserves in the network. It is also urgent to review the status of the U.S. bioreserves included in the network and the status of research within them.

The United States had a national committee for liaison with the program, but that committee was abolished at the request of the Executive Director of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO several years ago. The UNESCO Secretariat requires a point of contact in the United States for the program, and with the abolition of the national committee that responsibility devolved on a State Department employee who is not a scientist. A scientist working in the field of biodiversity and/or bioreserves should be identified and made the point of contact as soon as possible. Ultimately, however, a committee should be again created in order to include a broad range of expertise on biodiversity and bioreserves; no one scientist has a broad enough view of the field to understand the full scale of relevant U.S. scientific efforts. That committee should also provide information and recommendations to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, as do committees alread in Oceanography and Earth Sciences.

John Daly
(Note the opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.)

Biosphere Connections: Partnership Among the Star Alliance, UNESCO-MAB, Ramsar and IUCN

Established with the objective of promoting nature conservation and sustainable development, the Biosphere Connections partnership was launched in 2007 by the Global Airline coalition "Star Alliance" together with UNESCO-MAB, Ramsar Wetlands and IUCN.

Through Biosphere Connections, the Star Alliance will support UNESCO-MAB, Ramsar and IUCN in their conservation efforts and especially the local field scientists who conserve and manage biosphere reserves, wetlands, national parks and world heritage sites around the world. Similarly, UNESCO-MAB, Ramsar and IUCN will help Star Alliance airlines to further improve their environmental performance and their commitment to sustainable social and economic development, in the communities they serve and beyond.

Read more!

Read the RAMSAR press release on the program.

Visit the Biosphere Connections website!

UNESCO Names 22 New Biosphere Reserves

Lagunas de Montebello, Chiapas, Mexico

The 21st session of the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB-ICC) (held from 25 to 29 May 2009) added 22 new sites from 17 countries to the UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) which now counts 553 sites in 107 countries. Read more:

• 553 sites
• More on ICC
• Photo Gallery
• Video

Celebration of Darwin Anniversaries

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. Incidentally, 50 years ago there was a centennial edition of the book with an introduction by Julian Huxley (the first Director General of UNESCO, known for his seminal book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis); the centennial edition remains instructive and has been reissued this year in paperback. Huxley came from a distinguished family. His brother was the writer Aldous Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; and his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and protagonist of evolution.

Down House (c) English Heritage Photo Library

Down House, Darwin's Home and Workplace from 1842 until his death in 1882 has been on the list of tentative candidates for inclusion in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites since 1999 and is the nominee of the United Kingdom for 2009.

As part of the commemoration of Darwin's work, UNESCO is sponsoring a series of symposia with the International Union of Biological Sciences. (Read more about the symposia.)

Perhaps the most enduring memorial to Charles Darwin would be the protection of the Galapagos Islands. These have a unique biological diversity, and Darwin's visit to the islands was instrumental in helping him to develop his theory of evolution. The Galapagos Islands have been recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1978 and the Galapagos National Park (of Equador) has been a part of UNESCO's global network of bioreserves since 1984. Unfortunately, the Galapagos Islands have been on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in Danger since 2007.