The 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) began on October 18 in Nagoya, Japan, where delegates from about 200 countries, including governments, non-governmental organizations, business and civil society, have been discussing solutions to the urgent decline of plant and wildlife.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, we are losing species 1,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction, with potentially devastating consequences to ecosystems. Supreme Master Television’s correspondent reports from location.

Japanese Correspondent (F): Here at the Nagoya International Congress Center in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, COP10 is the conference gathering over 15,000 people from the member countries and regions to discuss international schemes which enable the fulfillment of the purpose of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Jaydee Hanson – Center for Food Safety, USA (M): The hope is that the nations of the world will come together and find ways to both stop destroying the planet and pay for groups and countries to help save it.

Correspondent (F): Biological diversity means the interconnection of the lives and individualities. Various kinds of lives exist on Earth, and are maintained in balance by holding various differences of ecosystem,species, and genes. However, due to human-made development, overhunting and overfishing as well as human-induced disturbance of ecosystems caused by introduced species, both species and ecosystems are in danger lately.

Wakao Hanaoka – Oceans campaigner, Greenpeace (M): Marine biodiversity has especially been seriously destroyed. Why? It’s due to destructive fishing such as trawling. In particular, the issue of the marine protected areas, how we can solve marine problems, is a focal point of the COP10.

Luis Delgado Hurtado – President, Yachay Wasi (NGO with UN consultative status) (M): I think it’s really critical that we are talking about our life and not only species, because we are part of the species – human species.

VOICE: Specific goals of the summit include creating a new 20-point plan of goals for the next decade to protect biodiversity from forest and other habitat degradation as well as pollution, while raising public awareness, and ensuring the sustainable management of ecosystems.

Jaydee Hanson – Policy analyst, Center for Food Safety, USA (M): It’s really the way we farm that’s contributing to these dead zones. The soils run off, the soils contain high levels of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that kill the ocean.

As long as we keep dumping on so much fertilizer, as long as we crowd cows together and make so much waste and crowd pigs together and make so much waste, we’re going to have dead zones.
Until we really make it a part of the agricultural work that we do – that agriculture has to preserve biodiversity – then it’s not going to happen.

Shohei Honda – Press Officer, Biodiversity on the Brink (NGO), Japan (M): I really would like COP10 to decide to formulate strong and binding post-2010 goals to enable a biodiversity loss of zero by 2020.

Correspondent (F): We greatly look forward to the success of COP10 so that all the beings will be able to live safely and peacefully as members of our ecosystem on Earth. This is Supreme Master Television reporting from Nagoya, Japan.

VOICE: To all participants, our appreciation and best wishes for a fruitful conference. May bold efforts prioritizing the root causes of biodiversity loss be quickly addressed for the planetary survival of all.

Jaydee Hanson – Policy analyst, Center for Food Safety, USA (M): I’m Jaydee Hanson from the Center for Food Safety. Be Veg, Go Green 2 Save the Planet! Long concerned about the alarming rate of species loss, Supreme Master Ching Hai has emphasized the need to act in halting one of its root causes, as during a July 2008 videoconference in Formosa (Taiwan).


http://www.cbd.int/cop10/
http://www.globalissues.org/article/171/loss-of-biodiversity-and-extinctions
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/world/asia/19tokyo.html?_r=1