Scotland's Wildlife – an assessment of biodiversity in 20

11 Assessing the 2010 target
In 2001 European Union (EU) Heads of State or Government undertook to halt the
decline of biodiversity in the EU by 2010 and to restore habitats and natural systems.
The following year they also joined some 130 world leaders, as Parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity, in agreeing to significantly reduce the rate of
biodiversity loss globally by 2010. In 2006, the EU issued a Biodiversity Communication
and detailed Biodiversity Action Plan to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010. A
consistent approach to assessing progress through targets and indicators has been
adopted in the UK and in Scotland.
Global
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2001 – 2005 showed that ecosystems have
been altered more rapidly in the past 50 years than at any comparable period in human
history. In April 2002, the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) pledged a significant reduction by 2010 of the rate of biodiversity loss at
the global, regional and national levels. Progress is assessed by 22 headline indicators
across seven focal areas (Annex 1, columns 1 and 2). The biodiversity target was
subsequently endorsed by the World Summit on Sustainable Development and
incorporated by the United Nations General Assembly into the Millennium Development
Goals to end poverty by 2015.
Prominent among issues identified were habitat fragmentation; climate change;
invasive species; pollution; and unsustainable use of the marine environment –
against the backdrop of human population growth and food security.
Europe
European Union Heads of State made a commitment at the 2001 Gothenburg Summit
to halt the decline of biodiversity by 2010. The ‘Message from Malahide’ (EU
Stakeholders’ Conference on Biodiversity in 2004) stated that rapid biodiversity loss
continued to threaten economic and social progress in Europe and worldwide. The pan-
European initiative SEBI2010 (“see by 2010” - Streamlining European 2010 Biodiversity
Indicators) specified a suite of 26 indicators to assess progress (Annex 1, column 3).
The 2005 European state of the environment report, based on 31 country assessments,
showed that a third of 37 core environmental indicators were not on target. Key
concerns at the European scale were identified as: biodiversity under serious pressure;
over-exploitation of marine fisheries; invasive non-native species; and potential impacts
of climate change. The fourth State and Outlook Report on the European environment,
to be published in mid-2010, will review the state of the environment for 38 countries –
including the UK - and consider what that state might be by 2020.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe assessment in 2007 covered the
53 countries of the pan-European region, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to beyond
the central Asian plains in the east, from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the
Mediterranean Sea in the south. The 2007 assessment gave particular attention to
environmental priorities, including: air emissions; urban air quality; trans-boundary,
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