In a statement Thursday, CBD's Executive Secretary Ahmed Djorghlaf regretted that the world was presently faced with major challenges to feed a growing population in an increasingly urbanised world.
The challenge was further compounded by the impacts of climate change and the unprecedented loss of bio-diversity, the official observed.
Djorghlaf's statement came against the background of increasing prices of basic commodities and staple foods, and at a time when global food stocks are said to be at their lowest.
The official partly blamed human kind for the catastrophe, saying man had continued to interfere the eco-system in the name of food production.
"During the last 50 years, humans have altered ecosystems more rapidly and more extensively than in any other period in human history. Indeed more land was converted to cropland during the last 50 years than in the previous two centuries," the statement said.
According to Djorghalaf, 20 hectares of forest were disappearing worldwide "every minute" while more than 10 million hectares of forests are destroyed every year
Achim Steiner, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director agreed, predicting that over the coming few decades, the pace of loss could rise to 1,000 to 10,000 times the present rate.
He described alteration of the ecosystem as more than an "asset-stripping of natural and nature based capital" and pleaded that food production should not be allowed to compromise biological diversity.
"This is nothing less than asset-stripping of the globe's natural and nature based capital - from forests and coral reefs to river systems and soils," he said.
Meanwhile, Djorghlaf said the renewal of agricultural biological diversity, including ways to address the adverse effects of climate change, would be discussed at a two-week conference on biological diversity in Bonn, Germany, starting 19 May.
The two-conference will hold two years before the deadline for achieving 2010 diversity, adopted in 2002 by 110 heads of state and governments, to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss at global and national level, as a contribution to poverty alleviation.
The conference will also address the accelerated rate of deforestation.
Nairobi - 15/05/2008
Pana
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