COP15: cohabiting with nature

For most people, the state of nature is not an enviable ideal. Since the dawn of time, humans have deployed a wealth of ingenuity to protect ourselves from calamities: floods, storms, famines, epidemics. As a result, we belong to the species that – by far – modifies its environment the most profoundly. 

It may seem paradoxical, therefore, to push for what conservationists call the "rewilding" of our planet. Yet our survival depends on it. And herein lies the paradox. By trying to protect ourselves from nature, we have ignored it. We have exploited it and are destroying it. And, in doing so, we are destroying ourselves. 

The last two centuries have been marked by ecological change on a massive scale. The damage to the environment is such that we are experiencing what scientists consider to be the 6th extinction. And recently the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) estimated that 70% of wildlife has disappeared in the last fifty years.

Therefore, COP15 has an obligation to get concrete results. The organizers of this 15th UN Biodiversity Summit, which opens Wednesday in Montreal, have set an ambitious, but not unattainable, goal: getting countries to commit to protecting 30% of the land and sea by 2030. These places should be left to themselves and human intervention must be limited. 

Some encouraging experiments have been carried out in Europe over the last several years. As one of the leaders in the field explained to La Croix, restoring areas to nature is not a question of "chasing away humans, but of better articulating their presence with the natural world". 

The interdependence is such that we have little choice. "All creatures are moving forward with us," Pope Francis reminds us in his encyclical Laudato si'. It is not only our duty, but also in our interest to live together. Because, in the end, nature always ends up taking back its rights.

Jérôme Chapuis is the editor-in-chief of La Croix.