the year of biodiversity

United Nations has declared 2010 as the year of biodiversity. This as said by the CBD (Convention on Biodiversity), ' it is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives'.

But what is Biodiversity. In the simplest terms, it can be understood as variation (diversity) of the life form (bio). The measure of biodiversity is often geographical or temporal. It means we can measure biodiversity at our local, ecosystem, country or global level.

Biodiversity has been under threat for a long time due to human activities. Destruction of habitat, hunting, deforestation, Climate Change are some of the many threats being faced by the biodiversity. Hence, the UN has decided to celebrate 2010 as a celebration of life and has declared it as the international year of biodiversity.

CBD defines 4 reason for declaring 2010 as the year of biodiversity:



However, its upon us now to respond to the invitation of UN & CBD (they have invited the world to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity). The simplest (and the most complex) way to respond to this invitation is to make our lives sustainable. Use only as much as we need. Recycle, Reuse and Reduce paper (using cell phones will not solve the problem). Be considerate towards towards other species.

Think.....before doing anything.

As a small initial contribution to this cause, we have put the 'species of the day' widget on the blog. The widget updates the picture of an endangered species everyday and if you click on the picture you can know more about the species. It is brought to us by IUCN. Have fun and let others have fun.

The heat is on

I wished to talk something about the Atmospheric CO2 widget that we have put on the site. It is just to keep reminding us of how much change we are making to the environment and far we are going away from the actual composition that 'God' had created.

We being the most dominant species of the Earth are bound to have some impact on it. We are the most powerful and can control various things (but of course not nature, it will always fight back). But sometimes this power gets on our head and we forget our responsibilities. Remember the movie Spiderman and the famous dialogue 'with great power comes great responsibility'. So, just to remind what our great power is doing and what great responsibility we have at our hands, we have added this widget.

It shows the changing CO2 concentration for last few years and the trend currently is invariably a rising one. The data has been feeding into this widget comes from very credible sources like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA), USA and Mauna Lao Observatory (from where the Keeling curve originated; we will tell you about it in later posts).

So, just keep an eye on the CO2.