In a new report, the intergovernmental body calls on managers to stop taking into account only the market value of nature.
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What value – or rather what values - should we give to nature? The scientific and political intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES) provides answers to this vast question, Monday, July 11. By first formulating an observation: the value that is predominantly attributed to biodiversity, that is to say its market value, is largely insufficient to translate all of its contributions to humanity. It also does not allow to face the gigantic challenge of the collapse of the living. Make political and economic decisions by having only a limited vision of what nature brings, as is the case today, is on the contrary “an important factor” at the origin of the crisis.
Often presented as “the IPCC of biodiversity”, in reference to the group of intergovernmental experts on the evolution of the climate, the IPBES adopted, during its plenary session in Bonn, in Germany, its report of Evaluation on the estimation of the values of nature, fruit of four years of work and the collaboration of 82 scientists and global experts of different disciplines. The “summary to decision -makers” published on Monday, of around thirty pages, was approved by the 139 member governments of this body, giving it a significant political weight. These decision -makers also validated another report, presented on Friday, which enjoins them to manage the wild species on which the world population depends on its survival.
For this new evaluation, IPBES has been interested in multiple values associated with nature, which vary according to knowledge, languages, cultural traditions or environmental contexts. While some consider peoples and nature as interdependent and part of the same holistic system, others see them as two separate entities. Experts have classified these different approaches into four main categories: living “nature,” with “nature,” in “nature and” as “nature.
” We see nature as A huge factory “
Those who see themselves as living in nature, explain the researchers, emphasize the capacity of it to provide resources to ensure means of subsistence and meet the needs and desires of human beings: a river will be valued according to the number of fish caught for food. Considering yourself how living with nature makes it possible to recognize the intrinsic value of non -human living beings – and, for example, the right of a fish to swim freely in a river. The idea of living in nature refers to the importance of the natural framework in the construction of the feeling of belonging and the identity of people. Finally, the approach aimed at living as nature testifies to a physical, mental and spiritual connection of human beings with their environment – the river can be considered sacred.
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