World leaders have failed to fulfill their commitments to reduce the global rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, and have instead overseen “alarming” biodiversity declines, finds the first assessment of how the targets expressed in the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity have not been met.Since 1970, human activities have reduced animal populations by 30 percent, the area of mangroves and sea grasses by 20 percent and the coverage of living corals by 40 percent, the assessment finds.

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