Biodiversity crisis: "Humanity must stop considering nature as a source of profit", warns the UN

Humanity must stop considering nature as a source of short-term profit, warns the UN in a report published Monday.

Without such a change, the goals of sustainable development and reducing inequalities in the world will remain wishful thinking, underline the UN biodiversity experts (IPBES).

“The way we approach economic development is at the heart of the biodiversity crisis,” summarizes Unai Pascual, environmental economist at the University of Bern.

The text, adopted at a meeting of 139 countries in Bonn, was published three days after another IPBES report warning that the overexploitation of wild species threatens the well-being of billions of human beings.

Humans, the main cause of the current crisis in life

These two reports will feed into the discussions at the COP15 biodiversity, in December in Montreal, which must set a framework for protecting nature and its resources at the global level by 2050. For this second opus, 80 experts analyzed more than 13,000 scientific studies on the destruction of ecosystems and its reasons and the alternative values ​​that could promote their sustainability.

Because humans are the main causes of this crisis of life, which is closely intertwined with climate change.

Since 1950, average life expectancy has almost doubled, while per capita wealth (in the sense of GDP) has increased fivefold.

However, the Earth has physical constraints and according to scientists at least six of the nine "planetary limits", thresholds that humanity should not cross to preserve the favorable conditions in which it was able to develop, have already been exceeded.

Two previous UN reports, on climate change in 2019 and biodiversity in 2019, had already concluded that only an in-depth transformation of the way we produce, distribute and consume could help redress the bar.

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A near-impossible task if humanity does not change the way it sees and assesses nature, warn IPBES experts.

Because the majority perception still remains that sustainability can only be achieved at the expense of human well-being, whereas the good future state of our societies requires a healthy nature, capable of regenerating itself.

No longer living “from” nature, but “with”

The report identifies several human “values” in relation to nature: humans live “from” nature if they focus on the exploitation of resources to fuel their growth and lifestyle.

This is the dominant view.

To live “with” nature is to consider it as independent of human needs.

The stated objective of placing under the status of protected areas 30% of the surface of the globe notably falls into this category.

While joining the first, since it makes it possible to maintain fish stocks thanks to the zones without fishing.

"We believe that this study on values ​​can help the negotiations, politically speaking," said Unai Pascual.

"But there is the disturbing feeling that it will not be easy at all," he acknowledges, while many differences remain according to the negotiators.