Hazy goals hold up conservation

摘要

With the world almost certain to miss a target to slow extinction rates by 2010, governments are looking to adopt new biodiversity targets next year. What those might be - and what science will be needed to underpin them - is yet to be established, researchers said last week at a conference on biodiversity held in South Africa. "2010 may not be the year when we reverse the rate of loss of biodiversity, but needs to be the year when we reversed the response to that loss," says Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).