Conclusion

1In the lead-up to the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), reports were coming out one after another, sounding the alarm about accelerating loss of biodiversity in every respect: genetic diversity, diversity of species, ecosystem services. For the IPBES,1 the facts are clear: continuing on the current course, it will be impossible to achieve our objectives for the conservation and sustainable utilisation of nature. The objectives for 2030 and beyond can only be achieved through “transformative changes,” i.e., by “A fundamental, system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”

2The same conclusions were reached by the GBO5 report,2 which was heavily influenced by the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic. This report insisted on the fact that the transition challenges facing the world are interdependent, and that each interface between nature and society (land use, cities and infrastructure, health, etc.) contributes to and is dependent on the others. This theme was continued in the latest IPBES report,3 which makes the connection between the decline in living organisms and the increase in pandemics. The report highlights the “One Health” initiative, which takes the position that human health, animal health and ecosystem health are interdependent, thus involving the protection of the environment and the fight against global warming.

3In order to respond to these unprecedented challenges, which reveal the vulnerability of our societies both in terms of ecosystem collapse and widening inequalities, these reports place health and solidarity at the centre of a societal project for the “sustainability” of the natural world, which would involve nothing less than a radical change in our lifestyles and a reimagination of the place of humans within nature.

4The articles in this book back up these conclusions. At a time when biodiversity collapse driven by human activities should have led us to rethink our relationship with nature, an economic logic was instead being extended to each and every component of the living world, distributing property rights to ecosystem resources, ecosystem knowledge and ecosystem services, transformed into commodities. The Nagoya Protocol is therefore based on an “economy of promises”, which postulates that by means of commercial transactions, the discovery of the active principles underlying a few genes can itself ensure both the protection of biodiversity and the recognition of the rights of indigenous people to their resources, and correct inequalities in development and economic power. This vision, dating from the 1990s and based on the ideal of the regulatory power of the free market, is no longer tenable. The revenues drawn from the access and benefit-sharing (ABS) mechanism are still negligible compared to the profits expected from “green gold” mining.

5Now, 30 years after the signature of the CBD, we can no longer maintain that the logic of property and the market alone can organise access by human communities to the shared resources on which they depend in a viable manner, and thus increase the resilience of ecosystems. Monetised, contract-based access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge has not in fact made it possible to protect the biodiversity of the territories where they originate. Above all, biodiversity research cannot be reduced to the exploitation of genetic resources by pharmaceutical industries, detached from their cultural, social and ecological values.

6In this book, we have highlighted the positive contribution of indigenous peoples to maintaining biodiversity. Their demand is that they should no longer be kept under the guardianship of others. The legislative texts governing access to their resources and knowledge must be negotiated in consideration of their aspirations in order to give them decision-making power, and to preserve their relationship with the environment and their political, social and spiritual organisations. Fair and equitable sharing is not reducible to commercial transactions.

7In a context where multilateralism is under threat, the question remains as to how to use the Nagoya Protocol in support of the first two objectives of the CBD – i.e., the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity – rather than as fuel for rhetorical discourse about the North-South conflict, likely to jeopardise future negotiations on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

8Lessons may be drawn from the observed limitations of the CBD’s access and benefit-sharing mechanism, which is nevertheless the environmental convention that most integrates objectives of justice and equity at the highest level. An objective of solidarity should be added to it as well, and supplementary approaches must be explored, such as the development of an international system focused on the “commons.”

9Since the Stockholm conference in 1972, the legitimacy of development as the foundation of the North-South social relationship and as a factor in the degradation of nature has been challenged. Certain choices are required between economic development and safeguarding biodiversity. GBO5 stresses that a large part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) conflict with the Aichi Targets, either because they are unachievable due to their links with maintaining healthy biodiversity, or because they contribute directly to its degradation. Choices need to be made between the overexploitation of ecosystem supply services, now under threat from current modes of agricultural production, and the preservation of ecological functions that ensure the maintenance and regulation of ecosystems.

10Solidarity implies the allocation of international financial aid to enable the least developed countries to ensure the conservation of biodiversity as a global ecosystem service, both for their own benefit and for the benefit of humanity as a whole, in particular by providing support to strengthen these countries’ capacities in the biodiversity sciences. But this funding cannot be based solely on ABS and on research activities, as proposed by the Nagoya Protocol, while those responsible for the damage to biodiversity remain uninvolved.

11In all these challenges, so fundamental for our societies, and in light of the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, the development of genuine environmental justice should make it possible to distribute the costs and benefits of protecting biodiversity more effectively among humans. Research in environmental ethics and in the construction of the value to be accorded to non-humans and to the evolving and functional processes that bind them together must continue. The road is long, but the Covid crisis has made us aware that humans are just one of many species, both dependent on and in competition with other species within ecosystems, but one that is aware of its specific characteristics (including the ability to care about the fate of species other than itself), and that humanity must be wary of itself and its destructive abilities. Even the least idealistic could benefit from considering that the defence of their “clearly defined interests” requires cooperation with other parties. Because Covid-19 should remind us that the health of each depends on the health of all - both human and non-human. Darwin pointed out long ago that altruism could be a factor in the survival of species.

12To have been a milestone on such a path would not be the least of the Nagoya Protocol’s merits. Critics of its economic effectiveness should not overlook its role as a stimulus for the development of more equitable research practices. Indeed, this is probably one of the protocol’s successes in terms of promoting a more balanced relationship between providers and users of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Thanks to the protocol, a wind of self-reflection is blowing through life sciences research communities, including those historically less familiar with the notion of prior informed consent, or the fair and equitable sharing of benefits. All scientists working on or with biodiversity must now face those concepts. The challenge will lead them to consider how they can work on developing their projects jointly with the stakeholders concerned, and to think of ways their research can give back to the suppliers of genetic resources and the associated traditional knowledge. This kind of thinking certainly did not wait for the protocol to emerge, but it is now gaining momentum, and converging in certain aspects with the movement to open up research through citizen science. This is evidenced by the ethics charters and innovation promotion charters developed by higher education and research establishments, which explicitly incorporate the principle of fair and equitable sharing.

13The young history of the ABS and the Nagoya Protocol also shows that a common pool of resources is a precious asset, and one that can be demolished more easily than it can be rebuilt. The fate of biological diversity – which has gone from being the common heritage of humanity to being an asset of State sovereignty, should put us on the alert. Thus, at the risk of making a painful return to a dog-eat-dog free for all, the enthusiastic development of the common data pool being promoted by Open Data policies must continue, but with unwavering attention to giving back to the territories and communities at hand. The opening up of the data must be effective and encouraged so that the scientific communities and citizens of the Global South can develop their capacity to make use of it through the lens of their own needs.

14Though we do see a need to “tease the Nagoya Protocol,” this also reflects the extent to which the protocol provokes and challenges us. In order for the Nagoya Protocol to contribute to the emergence of the ecological civilisation the COP15 has prompted us to build, it will need to be based on solidarity and on the commons, so that it can participate in a new project of relating to nature and sharing it. This must be our ambition above all.