The current concerns about biodiversity are part of an ancient history, which runs from Linnaeus and Darwin to the International Union for the Protection of Nature. To meet immense challenges, Patrick Blandin proposes to define an ethics of biodiversity, likely to associate conservation of ecosystems and democratic global governance. An interesting but problematic proposal.
Is it greater consecration for an intellectual than to create a neologism and to see it adopt at dazzling speed ? The word “ biodiversity “Is one of those terms whose meaning is so immediate that one wonders how we could think our world without him. Biodiversity is now not only part of language, it is the subject of international agreements. And yet the term was born in 1986: it was during a National Academy of Sciences forum on the “ Biological Diversity »That his promoters, looking for a title, opted for the contraction Biodiversity.
Birth of a concept
Current concerns about biodiversity arise from two movements: the study and classification of living beings of the globe, on the one hand, and the awareness and study of interdependencies between living organisms, on the other hand.
It is Linné (1707-1778) which throws the basis of a systematic and reasoned inventory of living organisms. This classification work will be enriched and become more complex over time. If the inventory of mammals, birds, trees or grasses turned out to be relatively simple (due to the limited number of species and the relatively easy distinction between species), it is otherwise countless species of invertebrates. Not only does their number seem to challenge the available human resources, but the distinction of species between them is often problematic. From what moment of butterflies populations, for example, diverge enough to be qualified as distinct species ? At present, the number of species therefore remains of the order of the conjecture.
At the same time, more distinctly emerged the consciousness of the complex interactions of these living organisms within the same environment. It was in 1866 that the German biologist Haeckel, Darwin reader, proposed the word Ökology. Twenty years later, in 1887, the American Forbes, starting from the study of a lake, will use the word “ microcosm To qualify the subtle game of interrelations between species. At the start of XXe century, clever introduces the notion of “ climax “As a balance of microcosm, presented for the first time as a” super-organization ». In 1935, English Tank proposed the term “ ecosystem “, Who meets competitors (“ Holocenosis ” Or “ biosystem »). However, he will end up winning, supplemented by the terms of biotope (the physical environment) and biocenosis. Biotope and biocenosis therefore form the ecosystem.
The great concepts are then in place to understand living organisms in their interactions between them and with the physico-chemical environment. No doubt we have not waited for the words to perceive this reality, and many were the academic researchers or the curious people who were “ Mr JOURDAIN ». But it is thanks to the emergence of these words-concepts that a discipline and a community constitute.
From Lamarck and Darwin becomes the idea that this biodiversity and the ecosystems it forms are the fruits of a long evolution, in a dynamic co-adaptation of the species. This evolution is also marked by the geological history of the planet. The drift of the continents, the drop or the rise in the level of the seas, the formation of the oceans or the emergence of a mountainous chain have powerfully contributed to isolate the species, leading to make them diverge or, on the contrary, to connect previously worlds separated.
The history of biodiversity has been punctuated by “ large extinctions »Whose magnitude and causes often remain poorly elucidated. Massive eruptions ? Meteorites ? Climate change related to solar cycles ? Be that as it may, these extinctions were slow processes, of the order of several tens of thousands of years. This is why Patrick Blandin refutes the use of the term “ Sixth extinction To designate the current process of rapid decrease in biodiversity. On the one hand, the latter is incredibly faster and, on the other hand, man is the cause (p. 143).
WildernessFontainebleau and the functionality of ecosystems
Modern concerns in biodiversity and nature protection have been fed on three movements. The first is particularly strong in the United States. These are defenders of “ Wilderness », An intact nature where man can come to recharge his batteries and which will give birth to natural parks.
“” The preservation of natural spaces, for the United States of the end of XIXe century, had a clear finality. It was a question of offering the public the possibility of contemplating the splendor of still wild spaces. “Transcendentalist” thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who published in 1836 a book entitled Nature, and Henry David Thoreau, who had experienced a life close to nature for two years, had a great influence in the development of a “culture of there Wilderness“. Transcendentalism, a current of thought both romantic and religious, considered wilderness as a divine entity, with which man, to find his spiritual unity, had to live a fusion involving all the senses (P. 153).
This current even received the support of the railway companies ! They immediately saw the interest in the development of nature tourism. This current will then advocate preservation.
In France, the mobilization of artists around the protection of the Fontainebleau forest was a powerful engine of development of a current aimed at protecting natural areas. But, from the outset, the question of the place of man in this management arose. These were more landscaped spaces than Wilderness. In this movement, natural spaces and biodiversity are patrimonialized.
The third current emphasizes the stakes of conservation of natural resources. It highlights the effects on environmental degradation companies. “” For (Pichot, in 1909), the conservation of nature, and more precisely natural resources, was at the service of the public good (P. 165). In particular, it had to contribute to economic development, respecting resources and their possibility of renewal. It looks like the 1987 Bruntland report on sustainable development !
These three currents which compete in conferences, mainly around the opposition between preservation and conservation, participate, each in its own way, in the development of an international consciousness which will end up. In Fontainebleau, on October 5, 1948, representatives of 18 governments, 7 international organizations and 107 public organizations and various organizations adopted the Constitution of the International Union for the Protection of Nature, Uipn. Today, the Union brings together 90 states, 120 public institutions, 91 international organizations and more than 800 NGO national (p. 170). With theUipnthe international community therefore has a negotiation and regulation institution. The constitution of this body of course did not exhaust the debate between the different approaches.
Ethics and evolutionary conservation ?
Patrick Blandin proposes to reformulate the problem and to found the conservation of biodiversity on an evolutionary perspective. It first proposes to seek an ethics, a system of values which would be based on the recognition of the evolutionary process. In this perspective, the conservation of nature is not a museology operation aimed at freezing the past, but the maintenance, even the improvement of the adaptive strategies of ecological systems: “ To keep nature is to keep its evolutionary potential (P. 239).
This posture induces two changes of attitude. From a scientific point of view, first of all, environmentalists must place themselves in a historical perspective and try to reconstruct the “ path »Ecological of a territory, going back in time as far as necessary. Examination of an ecosystem must be done within the long term. As for the social perspective,
“” Everything is not ecologically possible, of course, but the room for maneuver is large. Nature no longer imposing itself, it will be necessary to desire it. Biodiversity becomes part of the projects of companies: it must be wanted. (…) The objective, for a local society, is to manage ecological systems and biodiversity according to the life project that it has built (P. 244).
But, the biosphere being one, any local decision can have planetary consequences ; It must therefore take a spirit of solidarity on a global scale. Finally, nature conservation is a democratic project, both local and global.
Biodiversity, closing a global democratic governance ?
The prospect of Patrick Blandin has something to seduce. Geopolitical version of the “ butterfly »» ? Biodiversity conservation will become the vector of the democratization of global governance ? Unfortunately, the recent example of negotiations on red tuna, which has seen Japan successfully oppose its classification as a protected species, is not without nourishing prudent pessimism. Whether biodiversity is, regardless of its ethical value, essential to humans does not guarantee anything about the latter’s ability to save it. After me, the flood !
However, the popularity of the question of biodiversity, in which Patrick Blandin’s book participates, is progressing day by day. Beyond even the tests and books that are aimed at a limited audience, the generalization of documentary films, but also fictions (like Avatar), is a serious reason to hope. The fact remains that Patrick Blandin’s thesis – an evolutionary approach to biodiversity -, very satisfactory conceptual level, does not yet provide very safe management and negotiation keys. What to keep ? For what ? How are the costs and dividends of conservation share ? On what basis ?
So many questions that remain unanswered. Moreover, the testimonies which accompany Blandin’s reflection, for the rich that they are from an ecological point of view, fail to identify general principles of management, even if the book begins with a lot of humor on the ‘Adventure of “ Picnic “, Alias osmoderma eremitaa beetle that blocked for six years the construction of a highway in the Sarthe. It is true that a European directive had made it a priority species whose habitat should be protected ! But, for many species, we are not there. The local and global articulation of biodiversity management is still in its infancy. The path remains long.