Brazil: last 50 years see worst reduction in biodiversity
Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva told reporters on Monday that the last 50 years had seen a greater loss in biodiversity than any other period in human history.

There have been no forecasts of any slowdown in the rate of species' destruction, Silva told the opening ceremony of the Eighth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, capital of the province of Parana.

Despite the 1992 biodiversity agreement signed at the UN's Conference on Environment and Development in Rio De Janeiro, the destruction of species has actually accelerated ever since, according to the minister.

"I worry that multilateral accords are not being turned into concrete actions," she said, adding the 2002 conference in Johannesburg had called for a reduction of extinction rates by 2010.

She said she did not expect the conference to create a scheme that would allow all countries to boost access to genetic resources and the traditional knowledge associated with them, but hoped that the conference would take steps in that direction.

The conference is intended to make decisions needed to implement the biodiversity agreement known as the Biological Diversity Convention, which entails three objectives including the conservation of nature, the sustainable use of resources and the protection of the traditional knowledge of people.

The meeting, which will last two weeks, attracts some 6,000 participants, including government officials from 187 countries that have signed the convention.