Diplomats from 130 nations gathered in Paris on Monday to validate a grim UN assessment of the state of Nature and lay the groundwork for a rescue plan for life on Earth.
The destruction of Nature threatens humanity "at least as much as human-induced climate change," UN biodiversity chief Robert Watson said as the five-day meeting began.
"We have a closing window of opportunity to act and narrowing options."
A 44-page draft "Summary for Policy Makers" obtained by AFP catalogues the 1001 ways in which our species has plundered the planet and damaged its capacity to renew the resources upon which we depend, starting with breathable air, drinkable water and productive soil.
The impact of humanity's expanding footprint and appetites has been devastating.
Up to a million species face extinction, many within decades, according to the report, and three-quarters of Earth's land surface has been "severely altered".
A third of ocean fish stocks are in decline, and the rest, barring a few, are harvested at the very edge of sustainability.
A dramatic die-off of pollinating insects, especially bees, threatens essential crops valued at half-a-trillion dollars annually.
Twenty 10-year targets adopted in 2010 under the United Nations' biodiversity treaty — to expand protected areas, slow species and forest loss, and reduce pollution — will, with one or two exceptions, fail badly.
Based on an underlying report that draws from 400 experts and weighs in at 1,800 pages, the executive summary has to be vetted line-by-line by diplomats, with scientists at their elbow.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) document, once approved, will be released on May 6.
Historically, conservation biology has focused on the plight of pandas, polar bears and a multitude of less "charismatic" animals and plants that humanity is harvesting, eating, crowding or poisoning into oblivion.
But in the last two decades, that focus has shifted back to us.
"Up to now, we have talked about the importance of biodiversity mostly from an environmental perspective," Watson told AFP ahead of the Paris meet.
– Agriculture is key –
"Now we are saying that Nature is crucial for food production, for pure water, for medicines and even social cohesion."
And to fight climate change.
Forests and oceans, for example, soak up half of the planet-warming greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere.
If they didn't, Earth might already be locked into an unliveable future of runaway global warming.
And yet, an area of tropical forest five times the size of England has been destroyed since 2014, mainly to service the global demand for beef, biofuels, soy beans and palm oil.
"The recent IPCC report shows to what extent climate change threatens biodiversity," said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a main architect of the Paris Agreement, referring to the UN's climate science panel.
"And the upcoming IPBES report — as important for humanity — will show these two problems have overlapping solutions."
– Extinctions hard to see –
That overlap, she added, begins with agriculture, which accounts for at least a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
Set up in 2012, the IPBES synthesises published science for policymakers in the same way the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) does on climate.
Both advisory bodies feed into UN treaties.
But the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has always been a poor stepchild compared to its climate counterpart, and the IPBES was added as an afterthought, making its authority harder to establish.
Biodiversity experts are trying to engineer a "Paris moment" for Nature akin to the 2015 Paris climate treaty.
Public concern about global warming has crystallised around impacts ranging from rising seas to deadly heatwaves, and the Paris pact's hard target for capping the rise in global temperatures.
The 2018 IPCC report cited by Tubiana added a time imperative: to hold the line at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), the world must reduce CO2 emissions 45 percent by 2030, and become "carbon neutral" by mid-century, it concluded.
But finding the equivalent for Nature has proven difficult.
"Extinctions are not something the public can easily see," said Watson.
A growing number of scientists and NGOs are calling for 30 to 50 percent of Earth's surface to be "sustainably managed" by 2030, and more thereafter.
But the draft report makes no such concrete proposals.
The next opportunity for a visionary plan to be ratified would be the next full meeting in October 2020 of the parties to the Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China.
Cute or creepy: why humans love some species, loathe others
Paris (AFP) April 29, 2019 –
The Chinese giant salamander, the largest amphibian in the world, is not cute.
Weighing as much as an adult human, it has slimy brown skin, a giant mouth curled to a gormless grin, and puny, mistrustful eyes.
It is also one of the world's most endangered species.
And yet, unlike its compatriot the giant panda, the giant salamander rarely makes the news.
Why do some animals strike a chord with humans, prompting them to donate millions towards their conservation, while others draw little more than disgust?
And is a sad-eyed panda really worth saving more than a slimy salamander?
Size, intelligence, behaviour, rarity, how closely an animal resembles the human form — all play a part in our reaction to various endangered creatures.
"One of the biggest factors is 'cuteness': physical characteristics such as big eyes and soft features that elicit our parental instincts because they remind us of human infants," Hal Herzog, emeritus professor at West Carolina University's Department of Psychology, told AFP.
An expert in human-animal relationships, Herzog said the dark rings around pandas' eyes triggered humans nurturing instincts.
"Compare that to the Chinese giant salamander," he said. "Google it. It looks like a six-foot-long, 150-pound bag of brown slime with beady little eyes."
The salamanders are a vital part of their ecosystem, just as worms are essential to soil health around the steams and lakes they live in — which is just about everywhere.
Yet, like maggots, rats and snakes, the main instinct they inspire in humans is revulsion.
– 'Learned' disgust –
According to Graham Davey, a specialist in phobias from the University of Sussex's School of Psychology, we learn to revile certain creatures at a young age.
"Disgust is a learned emotion. Babies are not born with it… it's probably transmitted socially, culturally and within families," he said.
Some animals are reviled due to their resemblance to "primary disgusting things" such as mucus or faeces, Davey said, while others are perceived — rightly or wrongly — to pose a direct danger to the beholder.
"In terms of threat to humankind, disease and illness are bigger than being attacked by an animal," he said.
This might explain why most of us don't find lions and bears repellant — they are covered with the same type of soft fur that coat cuddly toys for children, even if it might be better to avoid one in real life.
– An orca by any other name –
As with most things, popular culture has a huge effect on how society perceives animals.
Whereas the movie "Free Willy" prompted a wave of sympathy for the protection of endangered orcas, "Arachnophobia" hardly helped spiders' cause.
See also: "Jaws" for sharks.
Even the depiction of fictional creatures can have a knock-on effect on public perception towards certain animals.
Take the main being in "Alien", for example.
"Seeing the one from the first film that had that mucus-y drawl dripping from the alien's mouth… sensitises people to disgusting things," Davey said.
Nor is it just the public at large who are liable to "speciesism", or discrimination against other species in favour of our own.
A study in 2017 found a strong correlation between society's preferred animals and those most studied in scientific research.
"Maybe that's because it's easier to get money" to study well-known animals, said Frederic Legendre, a researcher at France's National History Museum.
And popular species make money in return, according to Christo Fabricius from WWF — a conservation group indelibly linked to its panda logo.
"Reptiles, for example, are not very marketable," he said.
– 'Protect species, protect habitat' –
Not that favouring certain cute or charismatic species is necessarily a bad thing for conservation.
"When we protect an iconic species, we protect their habitat and therefore all the organisms within it also benefit," said Legendre.
But such species can become a victim of their own popularity.
One recent study suggested that a "virtual" presence of wild animals such as elephants and tigers — be that on computer screens, T-shirts or in children's books — can fool people into thinking they are more common in the wild than they really are.
The populations of most megafauna — from hippos to giraffes and gorillas — remain in peril.
Then there's the risk of poaching.
The rarer the species "the more value they provide for traditional medicine, for trophy hunting, and therefore they are poached more often," said Franck Courchamp, an ecologist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
So the next time you see a picture of a Giant Chinese Salamander, remember that there's more to saving Earth's wild species than looks.
