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Biodiversity ConservationBiodiversity refers to the full variety of life on earth-plants, animals and micro-organisms-including genes, species and entire ecosystems. Biodiversity maintains the basic ecological processes on which life on earth depends. Biodiversity is continuously being both generated and lost, but currently the rate of biodiversity loss exceeds the rate of creation. In addition to undermining broader ecological processes and the production of ecosystem services such as clean air and water, soil formation, and the regulation of pest and disease outbreaks, the direct consequences of this rapid loss include significant reductions in the availability of food, fodder, fuel, construction material and medicines, and an overall decrease in the ecosystem resilience to climate change. These effects are likely to be borne disproportionately by the poor.
The challenging problem of the region is the biodiversity loss, as a result of habitat destruction and fragmentation, climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution. The root causes of these threats are: changes in economic activities, socio-political factors, failure of conventional economics to recognize economic values of natural capital and of the ecosystem services
UNDP's activities UNDP’s strategy for achieving global biodiversity objectives in Europe and CIS is derived from its corporate mandate “ to provide a cost-effective one-stop shop to developing countries to assess their environmental financing needs and access environmental finance to preserve global environment assets, reduce poverty and achieve more sustainable development outcome”. The Strategy is geared to addressing the threats to biodiversity by lifting barriers impeding country actions needed to respond to the pressures and thus improve the state of biodiversity over the long-term. UNDP is assisting countries to pursue two normative solutions to addressing biodiversity loss in the region:
(i) Biogeographically representative Protected Area estates are serving as a bulwark against human induced threats on lands where conservation objectives have primacy.
(ii) Biodiversity management is codified within production systems on production lands where production takes primacy over conservation. |
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Main challenges in the Region