Chapter 10 



Maintaining Biological Diversity 



Internationally 



W' 



HIGHLIGHTS 



Existing international laws and programs to maintain biological diversity are 

 too disconnected to address the full range of concerns over the loss of biologi- 

 cal diversity. As a result, redundancies and gaps exist. 



Concerns over free flow of genetic resources have led to heated political con- 

 troversy in international fora. However, debates have been largely counter- 

 productive and could benefit from a more informed and less impassioned anal- 

 ysis of the issues. 



Intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations are making significant 

 contributions to maintaining biological diversity worldwide. These organiza- 

 tions, however, have different strengths and weaknesses; those of nongovern- 

 mental groups are largely the converse of intergovernmental groups. 



OVERVIEW 



International laws and programs relevant to 

 maintaining biological diversity have evolved 

 on an ad hoc basis. Efforts tend to be focused 

 on particular species or habitat types and under- 

 taken in relative isolation from other conserva- 

 tion and development activities. Consequently, 

 overall efforts fail to deal comprehensively with 

 diversity maintenance concerns. Redundancy 

 and gaps in coverage result, and benefits of in- 

 teractions between different activities go un- 

 realized. 



As a relatively new platform, biological diver- 

 sity maintenance has yet to achieve prominence 

 on international agendas. Increasingly, how- 

 ever, international conservation and develop- 

 ment organizations, both public and private, 

 are redefining their activities around the con- 

 cept of diversity maintenance. What remains 

 to be accomplished is an overall accounting of 

 the scope and effectiveness of this increased 



activity to determine gaps in the current sys- 

 tem and methods to fill them. 



Onsite laws and programs have their roots 

 in early 19th century Europe and a narrow 

 constituency concerned with the protection of 

 certain bird species (10). Since World War II, 

 however, the number of organizations, legal in- 

 struments, and scope of activities in the inter- 

 national arena has increased dramatically. 

 There has also been a shift in focus from pro- 

 tecting particular species to recognizing the im- 

 portance of habitat in species maintenance. Pro- 

 grams for maintaining genetic resources offsite 

 are barely a decade old, and increased atten- 

 tion has led to efforts to define national obliga- 

 tions to maintain and provide access to genetic 

 resources. Growing realization of the threats 

 to diversity has also focused attention on the 

 importance of cooperation between onsite and 

 offsite programs. Efforts to control trade in en- 

 dangered species on an international scale and 



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