UN biodiversity conference convenes in The Hague

Ministers, senior officials and experts from around the world are meeting in The Netherlands to try to better manage the Earth's biological resources. Forests, genetic resources and invasive alien species top the agenda at the two-week United Nations biodiversity conference in The Hague. The conference comes amid growing concern that the agreements signed by world leaders ten years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio to protect the planet from climate change, deforestation and species extinction, have had little effect on the ground. The planet's biological wealth was supposed to gain protection from the Convention on Biological Diversity but extinction trends in plants and animals are continuing.