This manifesto highlights why biodiversity is essential to all our lives. It explains how the Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) process has been developed to sustain and enhance this biodiversity and makes recommendations on the ways the process can be improved to meet the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010.
In 1994, the UK started to meet its obligations to the 1992 Rio Convention on Biological Diversity by producing the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). For the first time, a common agenda for nature conservation was prepared and targets were set to judge performance. Government, voluntary organisations and industry joined forces at national and local levels to try to rescue our most threatened species and habitats. Ten years on, much progress has been made. Some species have been saved from extinction, the loss of many habitats has been halted and some are being restored. But we still have much more to do…