The major international conference on the preservation of biodiversity, COP16, opens in ten days in Cali, Colombia. Objective: to consolidate the agreement reached at the previous meeting, to protect 30% of the planet’s land and sea areas by 2030. This is a huge challenge in light of the collapse of global biodiversity; as evidenced by the latest edition of the WWF’s “Living Planet” report, which is a reference in this area. It reveals that wild animal populations around the globe have declined by 73% in just fifty years.
This is an average: in detail, it is – 56% for marine fauna, – 69% for land animals. The inhabitants of freshwater ecosystems are paying the heaviest price: their numbers have collapsed by 85%. The causes have been identified: habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, etc.
The consequences are also known and damaging not only for wildlife, but also for the human species, as Yann Laurans, director of programs at WWF-France, points out: “Nature is what cushions extreme events such as floods, storms, wind, etc. and when we lose wildlife, we lose the forest, we lose the grass, we lose our shock absorber.”
“Extreme events”
“And,” he continues, “on the one hand, we are going to have increasingly extreme events and on the other hand, a system that is no longer going to be able to absorb it and therefore, we, the human communities, are going to take the full brunt of all these effects, droughts, no longer enough water in agricultural systems, and potentially problems feeding ourselves. »
“All this,” concludes Yann Laurans, “will make our systems less and less resilient to increasingly serious disasters.” However, there are international objectives to halt this decline. A COP is even dedicated to it; its sixteenth edition opens in Colombia on October 21 with the aim of devoting the ambition to protect 30% of the earth’s surface area.