The International Day for Biological Diversity is observed on 22 May. To address the importance of this issue, the Übersite Team has talked with the UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. Check out the exclusive interview.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. Why was this year chosen to draw attention to the issues of biodiversity and what are the main concerns with relation to the matter?

2010 was the year when countries agreed to substantially reverse the rate of loss of the diversity of life on Earth-it has not happened, indeed far from it with nearly all the dials heading into the red.

The International Day for Biological Diversity is observed annually on 22 May. The theme in 2010 is Biodiversity for Development and Poverty Alleviation. What is the importance of biodiversity to sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (Goal 1): Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger?

Biodiversity is the building block for the planet’s life support systems, from forests to freshwaters. These are natural systems that we all depend upon, but especially the poor. One example, one billion people depend on fisheries for their primary protein and an estimated half a billion depend on fisheries for livelihoods – yet in 2010, 30 per cent of stocks have collapsed: only 25 per cent, now mainly of low priced species, are considered to be in a reasonably healthy state.

In September 2010 in New York, a high-level meeting on biodiversity will be held prior to the opening of the general debate of the sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly. In October, at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Nagoya, Japan, Parties to the CBD will review progress towards attainment of the 2010 Biodiversity Target and seek strengthened commitment to new strategy and targets, and their means of implementation, post-2010. So far, what results of the International Year of Biodiversity can be mentioned?

Public awareness, and by inference pressure on politicians and businesses, is being dramatically raised via, for example, your blog Gisele and alongside countless other initiatives globally. In June, governments meeting in the Republic of Korea may back a new and transformational science panel to bridge the gap between knowledge and action. UNEP is also this year putting the extraordinary economics of nature on the table- vital to catalyze change in a world fascinated and captured by GDP.

In December 2010 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, a ceremony will be held to mark the closure of the International Year of Biodiversity and serve as prelude to the opening of the 2011 International Year of Forests. The forest felling or burning is one of the factors that destroy the biodiversity. Everything is related. What will be the main warning for 2011?

That the degradation and destruction of forests may be costing the global economy, and thus human-beings, up to $4.5 trillion a year: Equally that forests are a central ally in combating climate change that we destroy at our peril.

On this day, May 22, what message would you leave for the world about the infinite riches of the nature that sustain our life, which are unfortunately often destroyed by man?

That the birds and the bees, the fish and the whales, the trees, flowers and fungi, lions and tigers and humble soil and freshwater organisms can thrive without us, but without them six billion, rising to nine billion people by 2050, have little or no chance of surviving let alone thriving in this 21st century.