UN to launch global scientific panel on biodiversity

UN members took a key step on Thursday towards creating a scientific panel on biodiversity similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Nobel-winning group that helped drive climate change to the top of the global agenda, agencies reported.
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More than 6,000 representatives from 191 countries are meeting in Bonn this week to try to hammer out a road map for saving Earth’s vanishing flora and fauna, much of it in tropical rainforests and the sea.

Green group WWF welcomed a major report released at the conference, Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), which they described in a statement as "long overdue recognition of biodiversity as a key development issue."

The report has been likened to the Stern review, which transformed the climate-change debate by clearly outlining adverse consequences to the world economy.

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