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Biodiversity targets for the future
Following COP 10, scientists from various nations will meet again, this time at an event in Bragança Paulista organized by the Biota-FAPESP Program, to discuss how to monitor new biodiversity conservation targets
Agência FAPESP – An international event organized by the Biota-FAPESP Program, the Academia Brasileira de Ciências (ABC, Brazilian Academy of Sciences), and the Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (SBPC, Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science) will mark the close of the International Year of Biodiversity and the beginning of the International Year of Forests.
The international conference Getting Post-2010 Biodiversity Targets Right will be held December 11-15, 2010, at the Villa Santo Agostinho hotel in the city of Bragança Paulista, located in the state of São Paulo. The goal of the conference is to establish important new science-based targets for the conservation of biodiversity, as well as mechanisms to monitor the implementation of targets.
The event will bring together some of the key players who took part in the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10), which ended on November 29, 2010, in Nagoya, Japan.
“These researchers are being brought together again less than a month after COP 10, at which signatory nations of the Convention on Biological Diversity signed an ambitious agreement to conserve biodiversity and guarantee that its benefits are shared in a fair and equitable fashion,” said Carlos Alfredo Joly, coordinator of the Biota-FAPESP Program.
Ahmed Djoglaf, general secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, will deliver the opening keynote address at the Bragança Paulista meeting. Mr. Djoglaf oversaw the negotiations at the Nagoya meeting.
The next morning, Maximiliano da Cunha Henriques Arienzo, sub-chief of the Environment Division of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations (also known as Itamaraty), will deliver a report on COP 10 and on the progress being made toward the creation of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Mr. Arienzo led the Brazilian delegation sent to Nagoya and served as its chief negotiator.
The participants will then discuss issues related to the interoperability of biodiversity information systems, new techniques for studying the biodiversity of microorganisms, and modeling tools employing the indicators, parameters, and metrics used in monitoring the conservation or loss of biodiversity.
“On the final day, the conference will turn its focus to the Atlantic Forest, our oldest and most endangered forest,” said Joly, a full professor at the Instituto de Biologia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (IB-Unicamp, Institute of Biology of the State University at Campinas) and organizer of the Bragança Paulista event.
Four main subjects will be presented and debated during the following event symposia: National and International Interoperability Among Biodiversity Information Systems; Metagenomics as a Tool to Assess Micro-Biodiversity; Post-2010 Biodiversity Targets: Ecosystem and Evosystem Services; and Impacts of Local & Global Changes on the Atlantic Rainforest.
Invited foreign speakers include Eduardo Morales Guillaumin (Conabio, National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, Mexico), Monica Vera (Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, Colombia), Francisco Antonio Squeo (Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Chile), Alfred Püehler (Bielefeld University, Germany), Jack Anthony Gilbert (Plymouth Marine Laboratory, United Kingdom), Timothy Vogel (University of Lyon, France), Rodolfo Dirzo (Stanford University, United States), and Harold Mooney (Stanford University, United States), who is also Chair of the Scientific Committee of Diversitas.
Speakers from Brazil include Antonio Mauro Saraiva (University of São Paulo), Marcelo Tabarelli (Federal University of Pernambuco), Carlos Grelle (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Célio Haddad (São Paulo State University), Eduardo Eizirik (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), Geraldo Afonso Fernandes and Adriano Paglia (Federal University of Minas Gerais), Philip Fearnside (National Research Institute of Amazônia), Thomas Lewinsohn (Unicamp), and Miguel Calmon (BioAtlantic Institute).
“It is a privilege for the Biota-FAPESP Program to organize an event of this magnitude in partnership with the ABC and the SBPC. On the international calendar, this conference marks the end of International Year of Biodiversity and the beginning of the International Year of Forests,” said Joly.
Fees to register are, in Brazilian reals (R$), R$200 for professionals, professors, researchers, and postdoctoral scholars; R$100 for students.
Registration at the Villa Santo Agostinho hotel in the city of Bragança Paulista on December 11.
Scientific importance of the conference
As was made clear during COP 10, the organizers of Getting Post-2010 Biodiversity Targets Right stress that neither the 2010 global targets for biodiversity nor the Brazilian biodiversity targets for 2010 have been met.
According to the organizers, the failure to meet the targets was partly due to the fact that significant reductions in biodiversity loss rates cannot be detected through the use of the scientific methods currently available. Another problem is that it can take decades, or even centuries, for the impact of biodiversity conservation measures to become evident.
It is also well known that the effects of most of the primary drivers of biodiversity loss—land-use change, climate change, pollution, and invasive species—have increased since the targets were established in 2001.
“However, as pointed out by Professor Thomas Lovejoy during an event at the Bandeirantes Palace organized by the Biota-FAPESP Program on International Biodiversity Day, the targets have been beneficial. They have put conservation of biodiversity at the top of the global agenda and have triggered the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, as well as prompting the Convention on Biological Diversity to promote and expand initiatives such as the Program of Work on Protected Areas and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation,” said Joly.
In view of this, the meeting organizers believe that establishing new targets is a fundamentally important and urgent goal. New targets should be both measurable and science-based, including objective and specific actions capable of engaging governments at the national, regional, and global level with a proposal that, compared to earlier approaches, is nothing short of radical.
“It is imperative that we guarantee not only the preservation of ecosystem services that benefit mankind, but also of those intrinsically valuable processes that generate and sustain biodiversity and whose importance cannot be measured monetarily,” Joly said.
“In this context, the meeting in Bragança Paulista presents a unique opportunity to interact with the key international players in the field encompassing the characterization, conservation, and sustainable use of biodiversity,” he said.
More information available at: www.biota2010-targets.com.br