Step up aspirations to save biodiversity as 2010 begins We need
to set higher goals to save the natural world say IUCN's
President Ashok Khosla and Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre
in the latest issue of Nature. The Convention on Biological
Diversity’s post-2010 targets are likely to aim for a halt in
biodiversity loss by 2050 and for ‘more modest’ interim targets
for 2020 (Nature 461, 1037; 2009). Global aspirations need to be
much higher than this to avert the accelerating and catastrophic
decline in the variety of life forms on Earth. A 2050 vision
should aim both to arrest this loss and to restore the
populations, habitats and ecological cycles that support
biodiversity and ecosystem services. A 40-year horizon should be
about right, given that the restoration of forests, wetlands,
coral reefs and other habitats depends on species and processes
that often have decades-long generational periods. We should, at
the very least, aim to maintain biodiversity and the health of
ecosystems as they are now — i