www.countdown2010.net
GUIDE TO
SAVE BIODIVERSITY
THE
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Foreword
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Dear Partner, Supporter and
Ambassador of Countdown 2010,
This Countdown 2010 Guide is designed
to help you to get active around the 2010
biodiversity target and to bring your
organisation and its activities under the
banner of the Countdown 2010 initiative:
Let’s join forces on our common goal,
let’s work together to save biodiversity
by 2010!
The environmental movement has many
different scientific and institutional
approaches to biodiversity that it
sometimes sounds like an orchestra
playing three concerts at the same time.
As long as we describe the world in so
many ways, it is for many in the public
domain either confusing, disheartening
or simply incapacitating.
I believe that the 2010 biodiversity target
provides us with a unique opportunity to
rethink how we can unify the purpose of
all our different conservation activities in
a way that allows society to see the
common objective under which there are
different ways of working.
So, here is a major challenge to our
community: how do we rationalize the
many voices, the many different
research entry points that we have in
biodiversity, and bundle them in a way
that the rest of society can relate to – not
as an orchestra of hundreds of different
voices, but as a chorus of people and
institutions – different and diverse – but
with messages and answers that the rest
of society can understand?
No doubt there have been many mass
movements, relatively small groups
campaigning on a wide range of issues,
but humanity has only occasionally really
acted collectively. What is needed now is
a “majority movement”, since
governments alone will not be able to
achieve the 2010 biodiversity target
signed by their Heads of States. They
will have to lead but also need to be led
in order to take a “giant leap for
mankind” in order to reverse the trends
of biodiversity loss and to set humanity
on a more sustainable path.
Whether you are already well u