The environment ministers of the G8 countries and the five major newly industrializing countries that met in Potsdam in March 2007 initiated a process of analyzing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures. This is the so-called 'Potsdam Initiative' for biodiversity.
The German Federal Ministry for the Environment and the European Commission, with the support of several other partners, have jointly initiated preparatory work for this global study, named "The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity". This preparatory work will evaluate the costs of loss of biodiversity and the associated decline in ecosystem services worldwide, and compare them with the costs of effective conservation and sustainable use.
The work is divided in two phases. Preliminary findings from the first phase have been already presented in an interim report at the High-Level Segment of the international conference on biodiversity in Bonn, from 19 to 30 May 2008, which gathered 191 parties and over 100 ministers. The second, more substantial, phase of the work will run into 2009, and its final results will be presented at the next international conference on biodiversity in 2010 to be held in Japan.
The conference in Bonn was held under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The later was signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and conceived as a practical tool for translating the principles of Agenda 21 (a UN programme related to sustainable development) into reality.
The measures approved at the Bonn’s conference to tackle this issue included an agreement on a process to establish rules for the fair sharing of genetic resources. So far only voluntary guidelines exist. The agreement would deal with sensitive issues including the sovereign rights of States over natural resources and the protection of the rights of indigenous and local communities over their traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.
The conclusions of the conference were, however, slammed by environmental groups, which were not enough satisfied of the adopted measures.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon incorporated the 2010 biodiversity target into the Millennium Development Goals in 2007 and announced that 2010 will be the International Year for Biodiversity.
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