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This document outlines the activities that the Secretariat plans to undertake to support the IYB. Some of these have already begun and others are in development. The paper includes suggestions as to actions that other partners may take to advance the celebrations of the IYB. The end result of the IYB celebration will be action at various levels as a result of targeted "public awareness" campaigns in collaboration with a number of partners. A comprehensive evaluation will be undertaken early in 2011 to measure the quality and quantity of the impact of IYB events. A report will be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly in fall 2011.

As noted in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, climate change is one of the most important drivers of biodiversity loss" and is projected to further adversely affect the role of biodiversity as a source of goods and services. The impacts of climate change on biodiversity have been of major concern to the Convention on Biological Diversity since 2002 when, following a request from the Conference of the Parties and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group was established to carry out an assessment of the interlinkages between biodiversity and climate change. The report was completed in 2003 and focused primarily on the impacts of climate change mitigation options on biodiversity, and the links between them, in the context of the Kyoto Protocol.

This Handbook is intended as a reference guide to decisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Conference of the Parties to the Convention serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP-MOP) as well as a guide to ongoing activities in relation to particular Articles and/or cross-cutting issues of the Convention. The structure of the Handbook has been conceived with a view to allowing frequent updates, so as to take into account new decisions of the Con- ference of the Parties.

The human pressure on our planet’s natural systems is unprecedented. Loss of biologicaldiversity threatens to unravel the intricate ecosystems that life of Earth depends. Climate change is having profound and long-term impacts on human welfareand adds yet another pressure on terrestrial and marine ecosystems that are already under threat from land-use change, pollution, over-harvesting, and the introduction of alien species.