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The Equator Initiative is honoured to participate, together with UNDP’s Biodiversity and Development Group, in Expo 2005 Aichi, Japan. From 4–25 September 2005, the Equator Initiative’s work will be showcased in the United Nations Pavilion at Expo 2005. |
Over 150,000 visitors per day will have the opportunity to learn about the connections between biodiversity and development and discover how local people around the world are successfully generating incomes through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
Biodiversity: The Basis for Life and Livelihoods
The term biodiversity (shorthand for biological diversity) refers to the full variety of life on earth—plants, animals and micro-organisms—including genes, species and entire ecosystems, and the vital services these ecosystems provide to society.
Poverty and biodiversity are intimately linked.
The poor, especially in rural areas, depend on biodiversity for food, fuel, shelter, medicines and livelihoods. Biodiversity also provides the critical ‘ecosystem services’ on which society depends, including air and water purification, soil conservation, disease control, and reduced vulnerability to natural disasters such as floods, droughts and landslides. Biodiversity loss exacerbates poverty, and likewise, poverty is a major threat to biodiversity.
But biodiversity is not only an issue important to the developing world. Here in Japan and other developed nations, we too depend on biological diversity to provide many of our most important goods as well as essential 'ecosystem services'.
UNDP's Equator Initiative is dedicated to promoting community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This partnership programme brings together the United Nations, civil society, governments, and the private sector to recognize and support the work of community and grassroots groups in tropical regions who are simultaneously generating income and protecting their natural heritage. The display in the UN pavilion documents some of the most successful community efforts to grapple with these issues - the finalists for the Equator Prize 2004.
More broadly, UNDP has made Biodiversity for Development one of its primary areas of focus.
Through capacity development, knowledge management, policy advice and advocacy, UNDP helps more than 140 countries maintain and sustainably use biodiversity. The display in the UN pavilion presents brief descriptions of the closely integrated activities UNDP carries out through its Biodiversity Global Programme, the Equator Initiative and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which enable UNDP to leverage change at the local, national, regional and global levels.
We welcome you to read the UNDP Biodiversity display and find out more about our work.
For more information please contact us at:
www.undp.org/biodiversity
www.undp.org/equatorinitiative
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| Author(s) |
UN Pavilion |
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UN Pavilion |
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| Publication Date |
04 Sep 2005 |
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