The Earth's climate is changing and the impacts are already being felt by biodiversity and wildlife habitats across the planet.

 

This summary report from the international conference Global Climate Changeand Biodiversity presents some of the latest scientific research into how the natural world is being affected by climate change – and also how the natural world might respond in the future.

 

This conference was the third in a series, begun in Boulder, Colorado in 1997, for scientists and others working on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. Individual sessions of Global Climate Change and Biodiversity covered a cross-section of the planet's major biomes: forests, marine, high latitudes and montane, managed landscapes and coasts.  The impact of climate change on natural systems was shown to vary in different ecosystems in different parts of the world.  But the overriding message of the conference's summary discussion session is that climate change is all-pervading and will have an increasing influence on the life systems of the Earth.

 

The conference, held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK in April 2003, was organised jointly by the RSPB, WWF-UK, English Nature, UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.