The global community has less than two years to reach the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set for 2020, yet public awareness of biodiversity issues is still relatively low.
Experts spoke of the need to raise awareness of how important biodiversity and ecosystems are at an interview with The Japan Times during the seventh global conference of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) held in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, that came to a close earlier this month.
"In some targets we have made more progress than others ... but I don't think we have made as much (progress on) targets based on awareness," said Eduardo Brondizio, a professor at Indiana University who spoke at the conference as co-chair of a global assessment on biodiversity to be published by the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).