2010 Global Biodiversity Outlook - 3rd report released

As I noted a few months ago 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity.  More than 170 countries have invested much of the past eight years in a global plan of action to conserve biodiversity and 2010 was the target year for the culmination of many of those efforts.

So how are we doing?

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) report was released earlier this week in Nairobi and it gives both a good account of what the world community has accomplished and the status of different biodiversity features - see .http://gbo3.cbd.int/home.aspx.   The GBO is  like a super school report card.  While it does not gives grades, it does give a good quantitative and qualitative overview of the performance of the biosphere of our planet.  The report should worry all parents as there is a consistent trend of decline and loss with very few highlights.  Below, I have extracted a few of the assessments presented in the report that relate specifically to marine and coastal systems:

• 42% of all amphibian species and 40% of bird species are declining in population.
• Fish stocks assessed since 1977 have experienced an 11% decline in total biomass globally, with considerable regional variation. The average maximum size of fish caught declined by 22% since 1959 globally for all assessed communities. There is also an increasing trend of stock collapses over time, with 14% of assessed stocks collapsed in 2007.
• Protection of marine and coastal areas still lags far behind the terrestrial protected area network, although it is growing rapidly. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) cover approximately half of one per cent of the total ocean area, and 5.9 per cent of territorial seas (to 12 nautical miles offshore). The open ocean is virtually unrepresented in the protected area network reflecting the difficulty of establishing MPAs on the high seas outside exclusive economic zones. Of 232 marine ecoregions, only 18% meet the target for protected area coverage of at least 10%, while half have less than 1% protection.

Most sections of the GBO provide a great visualization of the scale and severity of human impacts on biodiversity - a good example is the increasing area of marine dead zones caused by increased nutrient run off as depicted below.

There is little in the report that is specific to Alaska or even arctic systems, but that should not limit your review  as we know how closely linked all global life support systems are.  As UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon notes in his introduction to the GBO... "The consequences of this collective failure, if it is not quickly corrected, will be severe for us all. Biodiversity underpins the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend for food and fresh water, health and recreation, and protection from natural disasters. Its loss also affects us culturally and spiritually." 
The report suggests that, in the absence of more concerted effort, we are approaching a global biodiversity tipping point as the figure below indicates.

The GBO is a timely reminder of the global importance of the science and education work undertaken here at the Alaska SeaLife Center - our work informs and enables improved stewardship of marine resources and has reach far beyond Alaska.