Although efforts to sustain biodiversity fall short, the issue is gaining attention as nations prepare for next year's 2010 International Year of Biodiversity summit. With nations admitting that they will fail to achieve their goal of significantly cutting biodiversity loss by 2010, a flurry of work is under way to develop new, more robust targets and ways of monitoring progress. These must be ready by next October, when the 193 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meet in Nagoya, Japan.

The article is available online though there is a cost for premium content from Nature 462, 263 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462263a http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091118/full/462263a.html. In addition to the highly visible components there are the unseen microbial biodiversity which is often neglected in most of biodiversity conservation programme. These are very essential for sustaining life on planet earth.