In 2002, 191 nations pledged to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss around the world by 2010. Despite the promises, enshrined in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the plight of threatened species has gotten worse, not better, researchers report online today in Science. “All the evidence indicates that governments have failed to deliver on their commitments, and we have failed to meet the 2010 target,” says Matthew Walpole, a co-author of the report from the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
This somber but not unexpected news comes on the eve of a May meeting of scientists charged with coming up with the convention’s goals for the next decade. Those goals will be submitted for approval at a summit of nations in Japan in October. Some experts hope the bad marks will prompt greater commitment to the protection of biodiversity in the next decade. “We have not made a lot of progress, and we need to get our act together,” says Thomas Lovejoy, a biodiversity specialist at the Heinz Center, an environmental think tank in Washington, D.C.
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