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GA / BIODIVERSITY STEINER
STORY: GA / BIODIVERSITY STEINER
TRT: 1.23
SOURCE: UNTV/ UNEP
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / FRENCH/ NATS
DATELINE: 20 DECEMBER 2010, NEW YORK CITY / 21 DECEMBER 2020, NAIROBI / KENYA / FILE
RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations headquarters
20 DECEMBER 2010, NEW YORK CITY
2. Zoom in, General Assembly
3. SOUNDBITE (French) Joseph Deiss, General Assembly President:
“The Second Committee adopted the resolution. I take it that the General Assembly wishes to do likewise. It is so decided.”
4. Wide shot, General Assembly
UNEP - 21 DECEMBER 2020, NAIROBI/ KENYA
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
“Establishing the IPBES has been a long journey and UNEP has been very proud to have been a facilitator and convener of this process. With the decision of the General Assembly, we now have the green light to take the next step and I hope that the year 2011 will prove that this is a vital building block towards the international community being able to address the challenge of biodiversity loss and the future availability of ecosystem services that underpin virtually all life, including economic life on this planet.”
FILE – UNEP – VARIOUS DATES AND LOCATIONS
6. Various shots, life forms in their habitats
A new international body aimed at reversing the unprecedented loss of species and ecosystems vital to life on Earth due to human activity has passed its final hurdle with approval by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.
In a resolution adopted by consensus, the Assembly yesterday (20 December) called on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to take the necessary steps to set up the Intergovernmental Science Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the final approval needed for the body for which the groundwork had been laid at UNEP-sponsored meetings earlier this year.
Commenting on the General Assembly’s decision, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said today (21 December) that establishing the IPBES “has been a long journey” and added that UNEP is “very proud to have been a facilitator and convener of this process.”
Steiner noted that with the decision of the General Assembly, “we now have the green light to take the next step” and expressed hope that 2011 “will prove that this is a vital building block towards the international community being able to address the challenge of biodiversity loss and the future availability of ecosystem services that underpin virtually all life, including economic life on this planet.”
The adoption of the resolution caps 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. Launched in January, the Year raises awareness and generates public pressure for action by global leaders on the vital link between biodiversity, ecosystems and survival, based on the premise that the world's diverse ecosystems purify the air and the water that are the basis of life, stabilize and moderate the Earth's climate, renew soil fertility, cycle nutrients and pollinate plants.
IPBES, which in many ways mirrors the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that has helped to catalyze government action on global warming, will foster the search for government action needed to reverse the accelerating degradation of the natural world and its species, which some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression.
Its role includes high-quality peer reviews of the wealth of science on the issue from research institutes across the globe and outlining transformational policy options to bring about real change.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), one of several UN agencies that will be involved in setting up IPBES, noted that record growth in cultivated land, overexploitation of freshwater resources and fish stocks, massive pollution by fertilizers and erosion of certain natural environments such as mangroves and coral reefs in the past 50 years have led to the massive extinction of species.
Some 12 per cent of birds, 25 per cent of mammals and 32 per cent of amphibians are now threatened with extinction within a century, it added.
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