UNDB – The UN Decade on Biodiversity

The UN Decade on Biodiversity 2011-20 is an initiative to highlight the value of biodiversity to all our lives and help build moment towards a better management of biodiversity and our environment for a more sustainable future for people, our planet and the diverse, living world upon which we rely.

Background

All 193 signatory countries of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) reported that they had failed to meet their internationally agreed biodiversity targets when they met at the 10th Congress of the Parties (COP10) which took place in Nagoya, Japan in 2010. The Convention had begun a decade earlier after the first Rio Earth Summit in response to the growing awareness of the issues of biodiversity loss and its intimate links to sustainable development and environmental change. Ban Ki Moon, Director of the UN called for a sea-change in response to the growing concerns of irreversible loss. The negotiators in Nagoya eventually agreed new targets for 2020 – known as the Aichi targets. They also declared the UN Decade on Biodiversity (UNDB) as a means of drawing attention to the importance of taking positive measures across all areas of society.