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Statement delivered by Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, at the Royal Society and the Biodiversity Sub-Committee of the UK Government Global Environmental Change Committee Workshop Biodiversity – Climate Interactions: adaptation, mitigation and human livelihoods, The Royal Society, London, U.K., 12-13 June 2007

The world recorded this year the second warmest winter. Eleven out of the twelve past years have been the hottest years since meteorological data were first recorded in 1850. A study by NASA has shown that, during the last 30 years, world temperatures have been the highest in 12,000 years. The summer of 2003 was the hottest in Europe in the last 500 years. Here in the United Kingdom, the Central England Temperature series, the longest instrumental temperature record in the world, show that mean annual temperature are now over 2 degree celsius higher than in the coldest period of the “Little Iced Age” in about 1690 and that half of this increase occurred during the last 40 years. There is not a single week since the beginning of the year where climate change does not make the headlines in the news. Climate change is real, and represents a global challenge not only for humankind, but for every life on Earth.

Publication Date
2007-06-12