Giving Compass' Take:

• The Guardian reports on warnings from the United Nation’s biodiversity chief on how the loss of biodiversity could threaten humanity and the need for action by 2020.

• How can we get more attention on the loss of biodiversity, which has gone relatively unaddressed in relation to other conservation issues? Which programs would have the most impact?

• Here's why it pays to invest in protecting biodiversity. 

The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief.

Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that are vital for global food production, clean water and carbon sequestration.

Pașca Palmer is executive director of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity — the world body responsible for maintaining the natural life support systems on which humanity depends.

Its 196 member states will meet in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, this month to start discussions on a new framework for managing the world’s ecosystems and wildlife. This will kick off two years of frenetic negotiations, which Pașca Palmer hopes will culminate in an ambitious new global deal at the next conference in Beijing in 2020.

Read the full article on the loss of biodiversity by Jonathan Watts at The Guardian.