Berlin - German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned Thursday of the dangers of failing to halt the loss of threatened species. Speaking to parliament 11 days before a major UN biodiversity conference opens in Bonn, Gabriel said that the international community was "a long way" from meeting the goal it had set itself of halting the loss of species by 2010.
Species loss is the central theme of a meeting of the signatory parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Bonn May 19-30.
"We are talking about the very survival of billions of people on our planet," Gabriel told the Bundestag.
The CBD was at a crossroads, Gabriel said. "We cannot rule out the possibility that it might fail once more, although we are aiming at success."
The German environment minister stressed the need for developing countries to be treated fairly with regard to demands to protect the environment.
Speaking for the opposition Greens party, Renate Kuenast, said the industrialized world was consuming at the cost of developing countries.
She highlighted the concern that large companies were patenting the rights to seeds, saying that indigenous peoples were being dispossessed.
And she accused countries like Brazil of destroying indigenous forest for cattle ranching.
The Bundestag passed a motion calling in particular for biofuel production to have no negative effects on nature conservation.
The ninth meeting of the countries that have ratified the CBD, initially agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, aims to begin drawing up a binding agreement to halt the loss of species at the Bonn meeting, although preconference information points to a deadlock.
The convention has been ratified by 189 countries, but not by the United States.
