Ecology:
Biodiversity Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals
Jeffrey D. Sachs,1,*
Jonathan E. M. Baillie,2
William J. Sutherland,3
Paul R. Armsworth,4
Neville Ash,5
John Beddington,6
Tim M. Blackburn,2
Ben Collen,2
Barry Gardiner,7
Kevin J. Gaston,4
H. Charles J. Godfray,8
Rhys E. Green,3,9
Paul H. Harvey,2,8
Brett House,1
Sandra Knapp,10
Noëlle F. Kümpel,2
David W. Macdonald,8
Georgina M. Mace,11
James Mallet,12
Adam Matthews,13
Robert M. May,8
Owen Petchey,4
Andy Purvis,6
Dilys Roe,14
Kamran Safi,2
Kerry Turner,15
Matt Walpole,16
Robert Watson,15,17
Kate E. Jones2,
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are designed to inspire efforts to improve people's lives by, among other priorities, halving extreme poverty by 2015 (1). Analogously, concern about global decline in biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services (2) gave rise in 1992 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD target "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss" was incorporated into the MDGs in 2002. Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target (3, 4) could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term. With increasing global challenges, such as population growth, climate change, and overconsumption of ecosystem services, we need further integration of the poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation agendas.
1 Columbia University.
2 Zoological Society of London.
3 University of Cambridge.
4 University of Sheffield.
5 IUCN.
6 Imperial College London.
7 House of Commons, London.
8 University of Oxford.
9 Royal Society for The Protection of Birds.
10 Natural History Museum London.
11 Imperial College London.
12 University College London.
13 GLOBE International, London.
14 International Institute for Environment and Development, London.
15 University East Anglia.
16 United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
17 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, London.
* Full affiliations for all authors are provided online.
Author for correspondence. E-mail: kate.jones{at}ioz.ac.uk
