Today, World Biodiversity Day, with its groundbreaking new report on the state of biodiversity in the EU, BirdLife International denounces the EU’s failure to reach its target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 and indicates the necessary steps needed to stop the loss of biodiversity and to enhance its recovery in the EU. Cyprus does not compare well with other EU Member States on the biodiversity issue.

“The message from this report is clear: the EU needs to take decisive action if it wants to turn the tide on the deepening biodiversity crisis and follow on the pledge of the European Heads of State, who adopted a new ambitious target during their last European Council in March” commented Ariel Brunner, Head of EU Policy at BirdLife International European Division. “We know what to do. The question is: do we have the will and the courage to take action before it is too late?”.

The report, entitled “2010-Turning or Breaking Point for Europe’s Wildlife?”, was compiled in cooperation with BirdLife Partners in all 27 EU Member States and analyses the progress made towards the 2010 biodiversity target against 10 major groups of indicators. Worryingly, three were rated as ’highly insufficient’, while all the others as”inadequate”.

The report shows Cyprus to be among the worst performers in terms of progress towards the 2010 biodiversity target, with highly insufficient integration of biodiversity into government policy and poor status for habitats and species of EC importance, even if the status and trends of birds is in the ‘adequate’ category overall. “Our biodiversity faces growing threats from badly planned development, habitat degradation, inadequate environmental impact studies and unsustainable water use, while problems like illegal bird trapping just make things even worse,” noted BirdLife Cyprus Executive Director Clairie Papazoglou. “And worryingly, our state services are not treating the matter as urgent or important yet,” Papazoglou added.

“The EU has failed to achieve the 2010 target and is still a long way off from preventing further loss of wildlife and habitats. The picture emerging from our assessment is one of continuing impoverishment of biodiversity and inadequate responses” continued Mr Brunner. “Despite the overall failure, however, there are many examples of best practices and local success stories that show how the EU already has powerful conservation tools, such as the EU Birds and Habitats Directives”.

As highlighted in the report, a strong post 2010 EU biodiversity policy must be properly implemented, especially focusing on its integration with other EU policies and on funding instruments. The report suggests specific actions that would enable a new EU biodiversity policy to achieve its goals, such as stronger enforcement of EU nature legislation, develop 2020 biodiversity strategies for key sectoral policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), new investments in green infrastructure and strong measures to counteract the causes of biodiversity and ecosystem loss.

This damning BirdLife report about biodiversity in the EU comes hot on the heels of a paper in the leading journal Science, which also provides overwhelming evidence that the 2010 target has not been achieved at a global level either. The independent study found no evidence for a significant reduction in the rate of decline of biodiversity, and that the pressures facing biodiversity worldwide continue to increase.