The Convention on Biological Diversity: Why it Matters to Asia's Fisheries

摘要

In the past decade, a broad scientific consensus has emerged that biodiversity is being eroded faster today than at any time since the dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago. Along with this growing scientific consensus, popular concern over diodiversity loss has increased as well, although it is expressed differently in different parts of the world. In the industrialized countries of the North, threates to species with which many people feel a special emotional connection-whales, tigers, elephants, and pandas, for example have formed a central theme of popular consciouseness and concern over biodiversity loss. Tropical deforestation has also been a major focus of concern in the North, in part because of fears that the loss of such a vast genetic storehouse will foreclose innumerable future options for development of new medicines, crops, and other goods and services of value to humanity. In addition, the well-pubilized threats to the cultures and livelihoods of the numerous traditional indigenous communities that ihabit the tropical forests ave stirred a great deeal of concern among many in the North.