Despite ever greater efforts to protect biodiversity, this precious resource continues to decline. Now a group of scientists and conservationists warns that to reverse this troubling trend, society must urgently rethink its attitudes to biodiversity and change its behaviour accordingly. The team hopes its message will be heeded by world leaders when they attend the forthcoming 65th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, which will be devoted to the subject of biodiversity. In addition, the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is scheduled to take place this autumn.

Writing in the journal Science, the group argues that biodiversity should be more widely recognised as a global public good. They point out that biodiversity provides us with a wealth of goods and services including food, timber, fibre and medicines as well as climate regulation, flood control, nutrient cycling, pollination, and recreation.

In this respect, the TEEB ('The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity') initiative, hosted and supported by the United Nations Environment Programme, has estimated that the economic benefits of biodiversity may be between 10 and 100 times the cost of maintaining biodiverse natural ecosystems. The initiative highlights how much cities depend on nature, and illustrates how ecosystem services can provide cost-effective solutions to municipal services, as well as how biodiversity might be an important business opportunity for companies, bringing significant added value by ensuring the sustainability of supply chains, generating new products, creating and penetrating new markets and attracting new customers.

Recent decades have seen a rapid rise in conservation efforts worldwide, and there have been some notable successes. One example is the presentation by the Commission and the EEA of two new tools to fight against biodiversity loss. However, biodiversity is increasingly threatened on multiple fronts. Overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, climate change, habitat destruction and the over-abstraction of water are all placing biodiversity under pressure.

Consequently, the number of species at risk of extinction is on the up; currently 12% of all known birds, 21% of known mammals and 30% of known amphibians as well as 25% of known plants are under threat. In addition, there are many groups, such as microbes and invertebrates, where we simply lack data on the conservation status of different species and their role in ecosystems.

According to the team, biodiversity must be recognised and managed as a global public good, and policies must be set up that reward positive individual actions and penalise harmful behaviour. Economists and conservationists should work closely together to develop incentives to promote biodiversity-friendly behaviour, the researchers recommend.
The team urges governments, businesses and civil society to integrate biodiversity into all aspects of social, economic and political decision making. Crucially, biodiversity protection must be addressed in all areas of government, particularly for policy areas such as agriculture, transport and energy which often have the greatest impact on biodiversity but currently fall outside the remit of most environmental regulators.

Also key to biodiversity protection is greater support for developing countries, many of which are rich in biodiversity.