COP 11 biodiversity - The death of vultures in South Asia

CONSERVING THE VULTURES OF SOUTH ASIA

Over the last 20 years, South Asia’s vultures have declined precipitously. The Oriental white-backed vulture, the long-billed vulture, and the slender-billed vulture once numbered in the tens of millions.

These three species have now been reduced by 99 per cent. All three are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and face imminent extinction.  The decline in vultures has been caused by diclofenac, a veterinary drug which is ingested by the birds when eating the carcasses of recently-treated animals.

Research has shown that eating even a very small amount of this drug can lead to death in Gyps species.

The loss of the vultures means the loss of a critically important ecosystem service. Animal carcasses are now being left to rot, leading to an enormous waste disposal problem and to a number of health concerns.

Feral dogs, dog attacks and the risk of rabies have all increased. Other impacts include groundwater contamination and loss of income for farmers, whose fields can become unusable for up to three weeks as a result of rotting carcasses.

The loss of vultures has also had severe social impacts on some communities, such as the Parsis, who traditionally offered their dead to the vultures in “Towers of Silence”, and the Jains, whose “Panjrapores” also relied on vultures.

COP 11: World Wide Views on Biodiversity: What the world thinks of biodiversity conservation

World Wide Views on Biodiversity (WWViews on Biodiversity) is a globe-encompassing democratic deliberation on biodiversity. On September 15, 2012, it gathered citizen views on international biodiversity policy issues and disseminated them to policymakers involved in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The 3,000 participating citizens from 25 countries were selected to reflect the demographic diversity in their respective countries and regions. They were provided with unbiased information about biodiversity and the international discussions about policy measures to stop its decline, and they were given time to deliberate with fellow citizens.

Here are the results of WWViews in a nutshell:

1. Most citizens worldwide do have some knowledge of biodiversity

2. Citizens think most people in the world are seriously affected by biodiversity loss and more participants from developing countries than developed think that their country is so

3. Citizens worldwide are very concerned about the loss of biodiversity

4. The establishment of new protected areas should be given higher priority than economic aims

5. Efforts should be made to protect nature areas 

6. Eat less meat and intensify agricultural production

7. Incentives and subsidies leading to overfishing should be phased out

8. Protection of coral reefs is a shared responsibility

9. More protected areas should be established in the High Seas

10. All countries should pay for protecting biodiversity in developing countries

11. Benefit sharing should apply to genetic resources already collected

12. Use of genetic resources from the High Seas should benefit biodiversity

COP 11: Marine protected areas: Why local communities matter?

 

Faced with denial of their livelihoods in marine protected areas (MPAs), local fishing communities across the world have often opposed MPAs. Yet, indigenous peoples and local fishing communities are also known to have evolved effective systems, traditional and more recent, to govern their resources.

They are also known to be in the forefront of struggles that have challenged destructive and polluting developmental activities on the coast—struggles that have often cost them their lives but have undoubtedly helped in protecting marine and coastal biodiversity in significant ways.

Studies commissioned by ICSF in twelve countries—Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Thailand, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama—capture stories of of conflicts with MPA authorities and violations of the rights of local communities, but also stories of community-led efforts to conserve and manage fisheries resources. They demonstrate that communities are in fact part of the solution.

As governments and conservation organizations seek to expand coverage of areas under MPAs to meet the Aichi targets, of bringing 10 per cent of marine and coastal areas under a protected area system by 2020, they would do well to learn from such stories, to ensure that their efforts meet with ecological success in the longer-term, and contribute as well to poverty alleviation and socio-cultural and livelihood security.

All about diabetes - how to prevent this major health risk

Prevent Diabetes

Research studies have found that moderate weight loss and exercise can prevent or delay type 2 diabetes among adults at high-risk of diabetes.

Find out more about the risk factors for type 2 diabetes, what it means to have prediabetes, and what you can do to prevent or delay diabetes

When should I be tested for diabetes?

Anyone aged 45 years or older should consider getting tested for diabetes, especially if you are overweight. If you are younger than 45, but are overweight and have one or more additional risk factors, you should consider getting tested.

What are the risk factors which increase the likelihood of developing diabetes?

Being overweight or obese.

Having a parent, brother, or sister with diabetes.

Being African American, American Indian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or Hispanic American/Latino heritage.

Having a prior history of gestational diabetes or birth of at least one baby weighing more than 9 pounds.

Having high blood pressure measuring 140/90 or higher.

Having abnormal cholesterol with HDL ("good") cholesterol is 35 or lower, or triglyceride level is 250 or higher.

Being physically inactive—exercising fewer than three times a week.

How does body weight affect the likelihood of developing diabetes?

Being overweight or obese is a leading risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Being overweight can keep your body from making and using insulin properly, and can also cause high blood pressure. The Diabetes Prevention Program, a major federally funded study of 3,234 people at high risk for diabetes in the USA, showed that moderate diet and exercise of about 30 minutes or more, 5 or more days per week, or of 150 or more minutes per week, resulting in a 5% to 7% weight loss can delay and possibly prevent type 2 diabetes.

What is prediabetes?

People with blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet in the diabetic range have "prediabetes." Doctors sometimes call this condition impaired fasting glucose (IFG) or impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), depending on the test used to diagnose it. Insulin resistance and prediabetes usually have no symptoms. You may have one or both conditions for several years without noticing anything.

If you have prediabetes, you have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In additon, people with prediabetes also have a higher risk of heart disease.

Progression to diabetes among those with prediabetes is not inevitable. Studies suggest that weight loss and increased physical activity among people with prediabetes prevent or delay diabetes and may return blood glucose levels to normal.

Can vaccines prevent diabetes?

No. Carefully performed scientific studies show that vaccines do not cause diabetes or increase a person’s risk of developing diabetes. In 2002, the Institute of Medicine reviewed the existing studies and released a report concluding that the scientific evidence favors rejection of the theory that immunizations cause diabetes. The only evidence suggesting a relationship between vaccination and diabetes comes from Dr. John B. Classen, who has suggested that certain vaccines if given at birth may decrease the occurrence of diabetes, whereas if initial vaccination is performed after 2 months of age the occurrence of diabetes increases. Dr. Classen's studies have a number of limitations and have not been verified by other researchers.

The truth about fat: Visceral fat levels are more harmful than potbellies

It may not be just fat that raises the risk of diabetes; it may be which fat.

At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, researchers looked at about seven years of data on 732 obese people.

The researchers compared visceral fat – the kind around organs – with other fat that creates, for instance, potbellies.
Researcher Ian Neeland found no additional risk with other fat. But he says:

“People in the highest third of visceral fat had over three times greater likelihood of getting diabetes than people in the bottom third.”

You can’t see visceral fat levels without expensive imaging, so Neeland advises controlling fat all over.

COP 11 Biodiversity: Amina Mohamed, UN Assistant Secretary-General calls for protection of biodiversity and reduction of biodiversity loss

Speech delivered by

Ms. Amina Mohamed, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of UNEP

To the Eleventh Ordinary Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Hyderabad, India 8-19 October 2012 

Your Excellency, Minister of State Environment and Forests, Government of India, H.E Smt. Jayanthi Natarajan, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

It is a great pleasure to be here in Hyderabad on this occasion of the 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD and we are greatly honored by your presence here today. 

I wish to extend to you, your Excellency, your Government and the people of India our deep thanks for the warm welcome and generous hospitality accorded to us since our arrival in this beautiful and historic city of Hyderabad. 

At the outset, I would also like to take this opport! unity to congratulate the new CBD Executive Secretary, Mr. Braulio Ferr! eira De Souza Dias for accepting the offer to join the CBD Secretariat. I wish also to acknowledge the contribution of the outgoing Executive Secretary, Mr. Ahmed Djoghlaf in enhancing the work of the Convention. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This meeting comes at an opportune and historic moment when the international community just renewed its commitments for sustainable development at the Rio+20 Summit.

Heads of States and nations recognized the crucial role of biodiversity in ensuring sustainable development. In addition, States recognized the need for cooperation in global partnership to protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Rio+20 has launched the world on some new and potentially defining pathways for achieving a sustainable century—the inclusive Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. 

At the heart of many of the challenges in respect to biodiversity and ecosystems are the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.

In celebrating the CBD 20th anniversary and may I in this respect also mention that it is UNEP’s 40th anniversary year, we note many achievements.

But we know that there is still a tremendous amount of work to do.

In advance of Rio+20, UNEP launched its flagsh! ip Global Environment Outlook-5 which benefited from many inputs from t! he CBD and the biodiversity community at large.

GEO-5 concluded that of 90 key agreed international sustainability targets, only four had been met.

In respect to biodiversity GEO-5 says:-

The world failed to reach the target of a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. This meant that:-

Around 20 per cent of vertebrate species ar! e under threat.

The extinction risk is increasing faster for corals than for any other group of living organisms, with the condition of coral reefs declining by 38 per cent since 1980. Rapid contraction is projected by 2050.

With more than 30 per cent of the Earth's land surface used for agricultural production, some natural habitats have been shrinking by more than 20 per cent since the 1980s.

How! ever, there has been some progress in terms of policy responses, such as increasing the coverage of protected areas both land and to a lesser extent marine.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources is another in where progress has been made. In this regard, I would encourage countries to ratify the Protocol as soon as possible to enable its entry into force.

So there are pluses but far too many negatives—many of which are well known and well documented.

But so are the solutions—the outcome of Rio+20 gives us renewed opportunity to achieve the objectives of the convention. The biodiversity and ecosystem community can be rightly proud of the way it has helped fuel that creative discourse not least through The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity and the work on realizing an Intergovernmental Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

The TEEB work in particular is assisting in informing the debate here in Hyderabad on the kind of funding that will be necessary to achieve the CBD’s 2020 Aichi targets.

There are ranges on the table which to some, in parts of the world still undergoing an on- going economic and financial crisis, may seem high.

But our collective experience and the new analysis through initiatives such as TEEB and others have illuminated that the costs of inaction are far higher and will rise and that the losses the world—especially the poor—are sustaining annually as a result of unsustainable management of the natural world dwarf the investments.

Furthermore, the private sector has a responsibility and a role to play too within the rules and regulations put in place by governments to ensure equity for all sectors of society.

I would be keen to explore with the CBD Executive Secretary and his team, ever improving synergies between the inclusive Green Economy work and the TEEB work and that of the treaty, in particular at the national level. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

UNEP support to CBD 

Programatic collaboration and cooperation

UNEP and the CBD Secretariat have identified areas for enhanced programmatic collaboration and cooperation in the context of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and the Aichi biodiversity targets.

At the regional and national levels UNEP has deployed Biodiversity Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) focal points in UNEP’s Regional Offices for Africa (Nairobi), Asia and the Pacific (Bangkok), West Asia (Manama), and Latin America and the Caribbean (Panama).

Their task is to enhance implementation of CBD and other bi! odiversity related Conventions and bodies including the Convention on Migratory Species, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species; the wetlands treaty RAMSAR and (CMS, CITES, Ramsar, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and the World Heritage Committee.

Enhancing the capacity of African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries

Since 2009, the African Caribbean and Pacific-MEAs project, funded by the European Union, have been building the capacity of ACP countries to better comply with their environmental obligations under selected MEAs.

One of the objectives of the Programme is to build and enhance capacity of ACP countries to better comply with, implement and enforce MEAs and related commitments to address the loss of biodiversity, drought, land degradation, and other threats to the environment. This is in line wi! th the realization of the three main objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Some of the results reached to date include the improvement of national and regional capacity of ACP countries. Compliance with, implementation of and enforcement of Parties obligations under the CBD have been improved as confirmed by the ACP countries themselves.   

Nagoya Protocol on ABS

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Last but not least, I wish to reiterate the call to all Parties to step up effort for the early ratification of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing—the Protocol’s go-ahead in Nagoya was really one of the high points of 2010 and that momentum and optimism needs to be maintained.

Equally ambition to support the ratification of the Nagoya – Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

Both are important parts of the jigsaw puzzle towards ! promoting better sustainable use of genetic resources with equity and safety while being critical towards achieving the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Honorable delegates, ladies and gentlemen, only time will tell if Rio+20 proves to be a game-changer in humanity’s relationship with the natural world and those essential, multi-trillion dollar services that maintain and support us all.

In order for the outcomes to flourish and to take meaning, all segments of the sustainable development landscape need to perform and to deliver on their part of the package, on their areas of responsibility.

I trust that the CBD’s 11th meeting of the parties will be part of that transformation to the Future We Want and the Future seven billion people need.