Fast is not always good. Species are becoming extinct at the fastest rate known in geological history, and most of these extinctions are tied to human activity. This year is the UN Year of Biodiversity and it seems as if in the blink of an eye, we are already half-way through it. This was a year that many of us had long looked forward to, perhaps with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
This was the year we had set a collective alarm clock as the deadline to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity. Now it is ringing rather loudly. All assessments of progress indicate that we are far from reaching the goals we set in 2002.