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Work on the poet-2020 global biodiversity framework is now well advanced and will outline a vision, goals and targets for the next decade of biodiversity conservation and beyond. For the effectiveness of Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, an indicator has been proposed for areas meeting their documented ecological objectives.

Increasingly frequent severe coral bleaching is among the greatest threats to coral reefs posed by climate change. Global climate models (GCMs) project great spatial variation in the timing of annual severe bleaching (ASB) conditions, a point at which reefs are certain to change and recovery will be limited.

One of the fundamental questions in the global climate negotiations is: what level of “ambition”, in terms of collective emission reductions, is needed to protect global climate? To help answer this question UNEP and the scientific community have published a series of reports on the “emissions gap1 ” since 2010. Of particular interest to the ambition question is the gap in 2020 between emission levels consistent with the 2o C climate target and emissions levels projected if country reduction pledges are fulfilled. If there is a gap, then there is doubt that the ambition of countries is great enough to meet the agreed-upon 2o C climate target

The Copenhagen Accord declared that deep cuts in global emissions are required “so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius”. The Accord called for an assessment that would consider strengthening the long-term goal including “temperature rises of 1.5 degrees”. Since December 2009, 140 countries1 have associated themselves with the Copenhagen Accord. Of these, 85 countries have pledged to reduce their emissions or constrain their growth up to 2020.

The biological diversity of the 72% of our planet covered by seawater is crucial to global resource security, ecosystem function and climate dynamics. We know little of the extent and the interactions of marine biological diversity but in all of the UNEP Regional Seas changes in biodiversity are the symptom of failures to manage marine ecosystems.

The year 2007 marks the twentieth anniversary of the release ofOur Common Future,commonly known as the Brundtland Report. The need for building environmentalconsiderations into decision making, a central theme in the Brundtland Report, is no longer abold proposition, but a basic necessity. Without the ability to monitor and assess changingenvironmental trends and their interactions with human development, navigating the sea ofglobal change would be reduced to reactive crisis management—hardly an effective way totackle policy issues with such profound relevance for the planet.

Since the 2002 Assessment of the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP), a large number of technical developments have taken place. The direction many of these developments have taken could not have been predicted in 2002. The Panel's Technical Options Committees, on Chemicals (CTOC), on Foams (FTOC), on Halons (HTOC), on Methyl Bromide (MBTOC), on Medical Uses (MTOC) and on Refrigeration and AC (RTOC) have each issued a 2006 Assessment Report that document these developments. The Executive Summaries of these reports form the body of the 2006 TEAP Assessment Report and their Abstract Executive Summaries, with the summaries of other chapters, form the Executive Summary of the 2006 TEAP Assessment Report."

The Executive Secretary is circulating herewith, for the information of participants in the seventh meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), a background paper prepared by FAO on lessons learned from case-studies on animal genetic resources. This information note supplements the progress report by the Executive Secretary on the implementation of the programme of work on agrobiodiversity, including the development of the international pollinators initiative (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/7/9).