“The COP15 has not been prepared to lead to a” Paris Agreement “on biodiversity”

Former ambassador for the climate, Laurence Tubiana explains how the fight against warming was carried out much earlier than that for the protection of ecosystems.

Interview by Perrine Mouterde

Representatives of more than 190 states are brought together in Montreal, Canada, on the occasion of the 15 e World Conference on Biodiversity (COP15). Their objective: to adopt a new global agreement to stop the destruction of nature but also draw attention to this major challenge, the crisis of biodiversity remaining in the shadow of the climate crisis. Director of the European Climate Foundation, Laurence Tubiana was one of the architects of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 and has closely followed, in recent decades, the progress of biodiversity discussions.

Why are biodiversity negotiations delayed on climate negotiations?

This is above all the communities and organizations that have highlighted these questions and their training capacity. The concern for the climate was born from a mobilization of scientists, in particular American, which gave rise to the creation of the IPCC [group of intergovernmental experts on the evolution of the climate] in 1988. At the time of the Rio summit in 1992, where large international agreements are concluded, scientists and NGOs are already relatively organized. And there is already a strong political dimension since even George Bush father participates in the summit and signs the climate convention, which will then be ratified. The testimonies of scientist James Hansen before the American Congress or the mobilization of young politicians, such as John Kerry or Al Gore, gave significant light to this climate risk.

This is not the case For biodiversity?

The biodiversity agreement has been promoted by scientists but also by conservation NGOs, and in particular by International Union for the Conservation of Nature . This represents different points of view and notably carried a very “conservationist” approach, that of the naturalists carrying out the taxonomy of the species and the description of the natural environment.

Very early on, there was also a conflict of visions between NGOs and between governments: schemically, some defend a utilitarian approach, saying that natural resources must be used, while others call to preserve Ecosystems in the wild. While the IPCC has established global scenarios necessarily abstract on common risk, biodiversity represents a territorial issue, and this confrontation between different visions constitutes a real handicap.

At the start, biodiversity is understood as the protection of large totemic species, such as tigers. Beyond this emotional dimension, it also has a very scientific prism (genes, ecosystems …), but none of this is really politically relayed. Nor is there any major economic stake: biodiversity has not benefited from attention – positive and negative – of the great oil tankers who were very worried about the climate, nor of those who were already betting on new technologies To decarboner.

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