1Since first coming to prominence at the turn of the 1990s, the twin concepts of biodiversity and sustainable development have had a profound impact on our understanding of the relationship between humans and the environment. Despite their points of convergence, effectively combining these two concepts has not always been simple, for reasons both historical and political. We now face the two-fold challenge of cementing the connection between social and ecological action, while also ensuring that these efforts meet high standards of ethics and social justice.

Preserving nature: the long game

2Although the term biodiversity was only coined in the late 1980s, conservation policies have a much longer history, in which the UICN played a prominent role. The first measures aimed at protecting nature were introduced in the late 19^th century, emerging as a global preoccupation in the latter half of the 20^th century and becoming increasingly substantial ever since, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Protected nature reserves have been the principal tool deployed in support of conservation policies for most of this period. Virtually non-existent at the end of the 19th century, such reserved now cover approximately 17% of the earth’s land mass. The growing urgency of marine issues has also led to the development of conservation policies focusing on the world’s oceans, where protected reserves are now more numerous and more expansive than those on land. But there is more to conversation than such spatial tools, and the past thirty years have witnessed a proliferation of instruments designed to protect biodiversity, not least those focused on ecosystem services, payment for environmental services, biodiversity compensation etc. These different instruments aim to simultaneously reinforce the incentivising dimension of conservation by adopting mercantile mechanisms, while also diversifying the range of tools available to support conservation policies.

Biodiversity: from a sectoral approach to an integrated understanding

3At the same time, biodiversity policies have sought to expand the range of stakeholders interested and involved in conservation efforts. To begin with, this meant placing the emphasis on what were clumsily defined as “local populations,” which is to say those stakeholders whose lives and livelihoods are most directly affected by conservation measures. A second wave of diversification came about as the globalisation of conservation saw the formation of professional networks with increasingly diverse geographical backgrounds, in parallel with the development of new scientific instruments and communication tools, which are now structured on a global scale.

4Since the emergence of biodiversity as a concept, conservation policies have sought to engage with it at different levels. Firstly, in terms of ecological dynamics, no longer evaluated purely in terms of the disturbance caused by human activities, but instead taking into account the specific histories of different ecosystems and the diversity that these divergent trajectories can create. Moreover, biodiversity requires us to better appreciate human diversity and the incredible multiplicity of practices and knowledge that result from it, fuelling the diversification of the instruments and tools designed to regulate these complex interactions.

5It seems clear that the restructuring of science and policy around the concept of biodiversity has driven a radical shift from an isolationist position, focused on protecting specific species or spaces, towards an approach whereby biodiversity is incorporated into every area of public policy (mainstreaming the issue, to use the modern parlance).

Sustainable development: a holistic approach

6Emerging around the same time as biodiversity, the concept of sustainable development has had a similarly transformative effect on our relationship to the environment. What sets the two apart is the decidedly holistic bent of sustainable development. Like biodiversity, it is a concept explicitly designed to help us appreciate the central importance of environmental challenges to the functioning of our societies. But sustainable development adopts a more overarching approach, proposing an analytical framework which aims to inform all societal choices and political actions.

7Whereas biodiversity policies are based on a specific objective — the protection of living organisms — and seek to incorporate this goal into all social dynamics, sustainability provides a theoretical context in relation to which all actions are to be positioned and understood. The most eloquent visual representation of sustainable development — where the sphere representing “ecology” overlaps the “social” and “economic” spheres – neatly sums up the ambition of this concept: to encompass the entire spectrum of political objectives in a single reference framework, overlaid with a constant preoccupation with the environment.

The objectives of sustainable development: bringing ethics back into the fold

8The formal definition of global sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015 might at first sight appear to be simply another step towards integrating environmental issues into decision-making processes at the global level. In fact, the SDGs appear to represent a partial but significant shift back towards social issues. Objectives such as gender equality, access to decent education, health and the reduction of inequality, to name but a few, reflect the extent to which questions of ethics and justice have returned to the fore in the normative frameworks being developed and promulgated by international institutions. This is not so much a matter of incorporating environmental issues into existing human affairs, but rather of imbuing policies designed to protect nature with an ethical dimension.

9But what are the concrete results of these new political standards and benchmarks, be they national or international? The history of development policies, such as the controversy which has attended the institutionalisation of sustainable development, is testament to the stubborn disconnect between political declarations and their practical application, due to genuine difficulties encountered in the implementation process, or else to publicly-espoused positions used to cover up for strategies which are in fact diametrically-opposed. The structural transformation being driven by climate change is a perfect illustration of the gulf which sometimes exists between declarations in the media and the reality of political agendas. When it comes to biodiversity, this gulf may be widened further still by the structural, ecological and social specificities of each milieu and territory, meaning that global governance on biodiversity cannot be synonymous with a one-size-fits-all solution.

Sustainability, diversity and ethics at the heart of scientific preoccupations

10The threefold challenge of incorporating biodiversity into contemporary society, adopting a holistic approach to environmental protection and putting ethical issues at the heart of sustainable development necessitates a political framework as complex as it is ambitious. But the successful incorporation of these objectives into research practices is a platform on which a new vision of science can be built, as we redefine our relationship to the social and natural worlds as well as our ways of working.

11The contributions included in this volume all provide examples, in their respective fields, of research practices, institutional collaborations, social engagement and scientific results in keeping with this new paradigm. They all contribute to the creation of new milestones, a model of science developed and put into practice with constant reference to four key requirements:

• the need to take into account the complex interactions between ecological and social dynamics;

• engagement with the world beyond the research community, the only way of effectively identifying the challenges faced by today’s societies and finding effective solutions;

• the ability to tackle both global problems, in the holistic sense of that term, and specific contexts, where universal solutions will not do;

• research practices in which the ethical dimension is ever-present, from the individual positioning of researchers to institutional objectives, with a special focus on collaboration and partnerships.

12The structure of this volume allows these four dimensions to emerge from the various experiments and research projects presented herein. This book approaches biodiversity via four major themes: tools for study and observation, the challenges of protection, connections with questions of human health and links to food and diet.

13The tools used and developed by IRD to study biodiversity are focused on large-scale data gathering, something which is too often lacking in the Global South, as well as improving practices in the field and encouraging the dissemination and appropriation of these tools among stakeholders in our partner countries. Cross-sector approaches allow for the combination of biodiversity data with the study of other phenomena: climate change, soil usage, deforestation etc. Similarly, the complexity of the ecological processes in play have incited us to turn to innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence in order to better understand their workings, or else to original approaches such as acoustic measurements to assess the condition of biodiversity. But these tools are also designed to act as interfaces with biodiversity stakeholders, in the mould of the Nagoya Protocol which sets out conditions for the scientific use of biodiversity resources and the need to share the benefits of such uses. Other exciting instruments include tools combining the observations of naturalists with new image analysis software, as in the Pl@ntNet application.

14Here at IRD, we understand that protecting biodiversity is not simply a matter of conservation focused on uninhabited spaces. On the contrary, we are acutely attuned to the protective potential of certain anthropic practices (such as the recycling of used water for fertiliser), the risks that other activities may pose to protected areas (such as wildlife tourism to isolated islands) and, above all, the importance of ensuring that regulatory and legislative measures are commensurate with the attendant challenge of social appropriation. At the same time, IRD has also taken a close interest in the protection of mobile species, from the impact of fishing on marine birds to the eco-technical networks formed by invasive species.

15Health is undoubtedly one of the fields in which recent advances have been most impressive, and most closely entwined with biodiversity, as unfortunately illustrated by the present Covid-19 crisis. IRD has been involved in research in this field for many years, for example in projects exploring the negative correlation between biological diversity and the risk of animal-to-human diseases transmission, or examining the connections between infectious diseases and the intestinal ecosystem known as the microbiota. IRD has also taken a close interest in the connections between medical research and social issues, not least in the form of studies in ethnopharmacology.

16Food is another domain in which the interactions with biodiversity are multiple and multi-faceted, with consequences which go to the very heart of sustainability policies. IRD is particularly involved in the study of socio-ecosystems which might appear marginal in relation to the dominant trends in biodiversity policy, but which may well prove to be of crucial importance to both biodiversity and food production in the areas in question. Examples include agro-forests, mangroves and even the unique pastoral practices associated with the grassy zones just below the glaciers of the Andes. Sustainable food systems need to be adaptive (the study of fishing in Peru provides a good example), integrated (witness the experiments conducted in sustainable aquaculture or efforts to recognise the biological diversity of soils) and political (e.g. researchers all over the world working to sequence the genome of rice to avoid the risk of a private patent). Meanwhile, IRD has taken a keen interest in the protection and diversity of genetic resources and the exploration of mechanisms capable of reducing our dependency on petrochemicals, for example by studying cases of plant-bacteria symbiosis capable of yielding natural fertilisers.

17Taken together, the contributions to this volume make it abundantly clear that biodiversity can no longer be treated as a scientific topic specific to any one discipline or sector; it is a phenomenon which cuts across all of the principal dynamics, human and non-human, which continue to shape the global and local changes we face today. The commitment to sustainability made by IRD is, we hope, a modest contribution to this daunting but fascinating endeavour!