Biodiversity protection faces the unprecedented challenges, including non-mainstream threats. It is essential and urgent to coordinate protection goals and economic development strategy.

Since the CBD was signed by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 and the 2010 target of CBD was established in 2002, biodiversity protection has been highlighted within a certain range. A series of protection efforts have been carried out at national, regional and community levels and have made certain achievements.

For instance, the global reserve coverage reached 12.2 percent of the world land. More than 170 countries have formulated biodiversity protection action plans. Thirty-one bird species have been saved from extinction.

Nevertheless, with the increase in threats to biodiversity, more species are approaching extinction. Of nearly 47,000 species that have been assessed by the GBO, 36 percent are endangered.

What's more, threats to biodiversity, such as loss and degradation of ecological environment, climate change, excessive exploitation, unsustainable use and invasion of other species, are increasing.

The achievements of the past 20 or so years are only the victory in one of the battles of the biodiversity protection war, which is long-term and difficult. Human beings are still in extreme danger.

Protection has always been regarded as the duty of nature conservators, and its significance has not been completely accepted by the society. In other words, biodiversity protection is not yet a mainstream strategy of society. This is closely related to the less developed biodiversity protection science and economics.

It is estimated, of 5 million to 100 million species on the Earth, only about 2 million have been discovered, and those fully known by human beings are even less.

Due to lack of knowledge on biodiversity, construction projects damage the ecological environment frequently. Some wild species became extinct without leaving any trace.

In addition, the value of biodiversity is not rationally estimated. Take the value of a panda, for example. Different values are obtained from the assessments from different perspectives. Thus, it is not an easy task to estimate the value of a large ecosystem.

As the GBO pointed out, perception of the "critical point" of the ecosystem is the key to future biodiversity protection. In other words, we need to know in advance the degree of the impact biodiversity changes may bring to human beings, so as to take measures as early as possible.

The message delivered by the GBO is very disturbing. Indeed, the loss of biodiversity is causing disastrous results. But the situation is not hopeless. We should fully combine protection targets with economic development, so as to display biodiversity and ecological services' value to economy.

In addition, enterprises and individuals should be committed to slowing down the loss of biodiversity. Enterprises should start paying attention to their business' impact on biodiversity. The oil leak caused by British Petroleum's oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico this April once again brought the disastrous result of enterprises' neglect of biodiversity protection into the spotlight.

Individuals should establish conservation awareness, reduce carbon footprints and purchase eco-friendly products to contribute to biodiversity protection.

Jin Jianming (academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, former Vice Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration of China, now Ministry of Environmental Protection of China):

As one of the 12 countries with the world's most abundant biodiversity, China has every type of terrestrial ecosystems. It is one of the eight centers in the world where crops originated and one of the four originating centers of cultivated plants. Take crops alone for example. There are more than 600 varieties in China.

But species surveys show, in recent years, although the losses of some species have been reduced to a certain extent, the overall situation is still not effectively controlled. Species losses remain severe in China.

The construction of some projects presents challenges to the ecological environment. For instance, there are now only a few original natural forests in the Three Gorges reservoir area, and they are still decreasing.

Most forests in the area are secondary forests. A vast area of natural forests has gradually turned into grass, and finally becomes deserts. This has caused an imbalance of surface water resources and led to serious water pollution. It has also resulted in caved-in pits, ground fissures, dangerous rocks and collapses.

Meanwhile, because of geological movement, construction of the Three Gorges Project and destruction of forest vegetation, rare and endangered animals are distributed unevenly. Most are found in forests, grass and shrubs more than 800 meters above sea level, and are few in number and scattered.

Therefore, it is urgent to establish a science and technology innovation platform in Chongqing Municipality to deal with the threats to the ecological environment in the Three Gorges reservoir area. Through such a platform, a series of mechanisms could be established, such as a real-time monitoring of the environmental and ecological data of the local area.

The government should also research the feasibility of ecological migration in the area and bring forward implementation plans, in order to reduce the impact of human activities to the ecological environment of the reservoir area.

The heartening news is that China has established a national committee for the International Year of Biodiversity. At the same time, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China will soon release a new version of the national strategy and action plan on biodiversity conservation, which will make clear China's strategic objectives for biodiversity conservation from 2010 to 2030, and confirm 30 areas that badly need protection.