Cities should do more to protect nature: U.N.

The world's burgeoning cities must do more to safeguard animals and plants by increasing parkland, planting trees and recycling resources, the U.N.'s top biodiversity official said on Wednesday.

"The battle for life on earth will be won or lost in cities," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters.Cities cover just two percent of the planet's land area but dictate 75 percent of the use of the world's natural resources, he said.

City dwellers have an impact far into the countryside, with rising demand for water and food."This growth of cities is not in developed countries, but in developing countries where there is still biodiversity.

We want to make sure that this growth is not at the expense of biodiversity," he said.

"Cities are not incompatible with the environment," he added during an October 5-14 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) congress in Barcelona.

The IUCN said this week that a quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction.

Djoghlaf urged more cities to join a 2007 plan launched in Brazil when 34 mayors agreed to protect biodiversity, for instance by setting aside more land in parks, planting trees, shifting to renewable fuels and improving recycling.

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Source: Reuters