Rich and poor countries struck a draft deal Friday to slow the loss of plant and animal species, agreeing to speed up work on creating protected areas while also looking at how to reward developing country for their natural assets. "There's an agreement now," Hans Hoogeven, one of the main officials chairing the United Nation. He said a core group of countries had reached a compromise on a range of issues including indigenous peoples' rights, the creation of a global network of protected areas, and governance of access to genetic resources and the fair sharing of any ensuing wealth. The deal, which also carried more detailed plans to monitor progress made under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), still had to be cleared by meetings of all the countries involved due later Friday, Hoogeven said. The CBD aims to significantly slow the rate of global species extinctions by 2010, a goal its parties have yet to tie down given universal ignorance over how exactly many different types of animal and plant exist in the world. Talks since February 10 came under the convention's broad goals of conserving the planet's variety of life, ensuring the sustainable use of the genetic resources it embodies and regulating distribution of benefits that arise from those resources. Source: Reuters