Ahmed Djoghlaf also told Reuters on the sidelines of December 7-18 talks on climate change in Copenhagen that every nation in the world was set to fail to meet a target of slowing the loss of species by 2010.
The Copenhagen talks are considering adopting a goal of limiting global warming to a 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times, a target agreed in July by industrialized nations and other leading economies including China and India.
"For each degree centigrade of warmer temperature, it is predicted that 10 percent of all known species will disappear," Djoghlaf told Reuters.
"Therefore this idea of stabilizing the temperature at no more than 2 Celsius...will lead to the disappearance of 20 percent of known species," he said. "Climate change is contributing to the loss of biodiversity."
He said scientists have recorded more than 2 million species, from apples to zebras, but there may be more than 15-30 million. World temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
"We continue to lose biodiversity at unprecedented rates and this has been seriously compounded by climate change but also by land use, urbanization," and other factors, Djoghlaf said.
A report this week said climate change will disrupt habitats for many creatures other than polar bears whose Arctic home is thawing.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Moderate global warming to wipe out many species | Reuters
via reuters.com
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