The International Day for Biodiversity is part of the International Year of Forests, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to teach the world's people about the value of forests and to make them understand the catastrophic social, economic and ecological losses that their disappearance would mean.

The benefits of forests are widespread: they collect and store water, stabilize soils, promote biological diversity and are a powerful factor in regulating the climate and the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. They are a source of income for businesses around the world and provide essential means and resources to hundreds of millions of the poorest people. However, even as we increasingly understand and appreciate everything we get from them, our forests are still disappearing at an alarming rate. This year's International Day for Biodiversity is an urgent call for action.

Last year, states agreed on a new strategic plan to protect biodiversity at the Nagoya Summit in Aichi, Japan. The Aichi Targets are to significantly reduce the rate of disappearance, degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats, including forests, by the year 2020. One of the major instruments that emerged from the Nagoya Summit is the Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Use. Forests are a vast reservoir of biological diversity, which is just beginning to be inventoried. If the Nagoya Protocol is ratified and put into force quickly, it will contribute to their protection and to the sustainable use of biological diversity. This progress in turn will be allies in the fight against poverty and in the sustainable development of nations.

As the current climate change negotiations demonstrate, there is growing recognition that combating deforestation and forest degradation can be one of the main aspects of combating the risks that climate change, species loss and land degradation together represent. I welcome the renewed emphasis on the importance of the role that forests play in sustainable development in this way.

Nearly 20 years ago, world leaders made the Rio Forest Principles one of the major outcomes of the Earth Summit, which was also the birthplace of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Next year, governments will meet again in Rio for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as “Rio+20.” As we are already preparing for this historic meeting, I invite all sectors of society to reaffirm their commitment to manage, conserve and exploit all forests without putting them at risk, for the collective good of future humanity.