Most modern governments now recognise how invaluable, and how endangered, biodiversity is and work has begun to improve the ways we use biological resources to benefit both the generations now living and those to come.

Awareness of the Earth's dwindling biological wealth was under particular scrutiny world-wide during three years leading up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In 1992, World Resources Institute, in collaboration with IUCN and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), released the Global Diversity strategy: Guidelines for Action to Save, Study, and Use Earth's Biotic Wealth Sustainably and Equitably.

The strategy for global biodiversity involved more than 45 partners and 500 individuals from all parts of the world and played a key role in helping to shape the legally-binding Convention on Biological Diversity which 156 nations and the European Union signed during the Rio conference in June 1992.

The Convention is one of the most broadly supported international environmental agreements. The Convention's three objectives are the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources.