"World Leaders Tackle a Tall Order: How To Preserve Life on Earth"

"It might as well be called the God conference.

Over the next 11 days, 193 national delegations will descend on Nagoya, Japan, in pursuit of a vexing goal befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth.

At stake is the fate of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement signed amid great hope and fanfare in the early 1990s, the status of which has fizzled steadily ever since. The document bound countries to cut mass species loss “significantly” and preserve 10 per cent of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. But this year brought the sobering realization that not one country had met those targets. "

Patrick White reports for the Toronto Globe and Mail October 17, 2010.

SEE ALSO:

"UN Meeting Aims To Set Species-Saving Goals" (AP)