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International efforts to preserve the diversity of the Earth's plant and animal species are falling woefully short of what is necessary, according to the latest report from the UN Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.In 2010 representatives from 194 countries came together and adopted a strategic plan for stemming the loss of the world's flora and fauna by 2020.The UN report, released as nearly 200 countries meet in South Korean to discuss the Convention, says, while some headway has been made, "in most cases this progress will not be sufficient to achieve the targets set for 2020, and additional action is required."Fight for the forest. Watch it here.Part of the problem in achieving the targets, said Shahid Naeem of Columbia University's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, lies in the Convention's overly ambitious timeframe."Ten years is actually a very small amount of time," he told VICE News. "It might seem like a lot of time but in the international arena, with so many countries participating, it becomes quite a unwieldy thing to negotiate."He added: "You can't say, 'Ok, we're going to do this by 2050,' because the rate of biodiversity loss is so high that you have to set the goals in shorter timeframes."Among the Convention's goals are eliminating financial subsidies that promote biodiversity loss, such as in the fishing industry, protecting coral reefs from the impacts of climate change, and preventing threatened species from extinction by establishing habitat preserves and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund found that over 50 percent of the world's plant and animal species have been lost over the past 40 years, highlighting the vexing problem of curbing habitat loss and species decline.Over half of Earth's wildlife has been killed in the past 40 years. Read it here.In 2010 the UN said nations would need to allocate an estimated $150 and $440 billion annually toward conservation efforts. It later called that estimate "conservative." An estimated $20 to $50 billion is being pledged annual, far short of what is required, says the UN and conservation groups."It all comes down to politics," Noah Greenwald, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, told VICE News. "The fact that people are becoming more aware of biodiversity loss is helpful because, really, extinction is the greatest problem that we face. It can't be undone in any way and it's going to have direct implications on our quality of life.He added: "It takes people making tough choices to go against narrow economic interests and decide that there's a bigger goal that has to be met."Follow Alex Dropkin on Twitter: @AlexDropkinImage via Flickr
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