Restoring Reviving LIFE
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THE UNESCO CourierJuly-September 2021 Restoring BIODIVERSITY, Reviving LIFE • Mountain gorillas make a comeback in Africa OUR GUEST • Islands: Fragile showcases of biodiversity Olivette Otele • Protecting cetaceans in the Yangtze explores the little-known • Australia: After the bushfires history of African-Europeans • Cities: Wildlife thrives in concrete jungles Subscribe Subscribe to the print version to the digital version 1 year (4 issues) : 27€ 2 years (8 issues) : 54€ It’s 100% Subscription fees cover printing costs. There is no profit motive. FREE https://en.unesco.org/courier/subscribe Follow the latest news Read and share from the Courier @unescocourier Share The UNESCO Courier with your network by promoting it, in line with the Organization’s Open Access publishing policy. 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CourierTHE UNESCO Editorial Contents Year after year, scientific studies are condemned to chronicle the sixth mass extinction – the decline of living organisms, the loss of species, the over-exploitation of resources, and the degradation of natural WIDE ANGLE habitats. 4 Ecosystems, which provide services that are Restoring biodiversity, reviving essential for our existence, are declining at an unprecedented rate, against the life backdrop of the climate crisis. However, it is not too late to (re)act. Long-term Pandemics: Humans are the culprits ................................7 John Vidal conservation measures are successfully halting the decline of some threatened Indigenous peoples: Informed custodians species. Protected areas, which today of biodiversity ........................................................... 10 represent seventeen per cent of the earth’s Peter Bates and Prasert Trakansuphakon surface, serve as a brake on urban and agricultural encroachment. “History will not be kind to those who deny the facts” ..... 13 The goal is to reach thirty per cent by An interview with Edward Norton 2030. But 100 per cent of humanity must be reconciled to living alongside all living Species migration: A silent revolution ........................... 16 Jonathan Lenoir beings right now. The knowledge of indigenous peoples “The protection of species suffers – with its mythological and cosmological from a lack of resources” .............................................. 18 dimensions – is based on a more harmo- An interview with Remco van Merm nious coexistence with nature, and can inspire practices that are more respectful Africa: Mountain gorillas make a comeback .................... 20 of biodiversity. Because, if the sharing of Baker Batte Lule scientific data is essential, if large-scale political action is necessary, change Islands: Fragile showcases of biodiversity ....................... 23 also requires – perhaps first of all – an Dena R. Spatz and Nick D. Holmes awareness of the deep and multiple links Protecting cetaceans in the Yangtze .............................. 25 that unite us with nature. Nature has been Wang Ding presented as the antithesis of culture for too long. Australia: After the bushfires ....................................... 28 It is now time to question the utilitarian Gary Nunn conception inherited from Descartes, which presents humans “as masters and owners Cities: Widlife thrives in concrete jungles ....................... 30 Loïc Chauveau of nature”. “Cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature”, ZOOM proclaims the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Since its 32 creation, the Organization has worked to Titicaca: The sacred lake reveals its secrets ..................... 32 Photos: Teddy Seguin/Université Libre de Bruxelles promote the reconciliation of humans with their environment – through its actions in favour of world heritage, and its Man and IDEAS the Biosphere (MAB) programme, which 42 celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. What our favourite TV programmes say about us ............ 42 This issue of the Courier is an invitation to Dara Greenwood become more aware – to be re-enchanted by nature, to reconnect with it, to be open to new ways of being alive, to marvel. It is OUR GUEST a call to reinscribe ourselves fully in our environment, to recognize ourselves as 46 “The history of Europe’s blacks has been struck living beings among other living beings. by a partial amnesia” .................................................. 46 It is an attempt to disprove the maxim stated An interview with Olivette Otele by French palaeoanthropologist Pascal Picq, that “Man is not the only animal that thinks, but he is the only animal that thinks IN DEPTH he is not an animal.” 50 The state of science across the globe ............................. 50 Agnès Bardon WIDE ANGLE The forest of Wadbilliga National Park in New South Wales, photographed two months after deadly wildfires ravaged the area in December 2020, shows some signs of regrowth. The bushfires in 2019-2020, the worst-ever experienced 4 by Australia, scorched 13 million hectares of vegetation. Restoring BIODIVERSITY, reviving LIFE Agnès Bardon UNESCO he decline of species, the shrinking of natural An unprecedented decline areas, soil and water pollution, and the modification of ecosystems due to climate The situation is urgent. In May 2019 at UNESCO, change. The ills plaguing the planet are well- the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Tknown, and have been documented for a long time. And Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) presented an yet, significant actions on a global scale have been slow alarming assessment in its landmark Global Assessment to be implemented. Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Using figures to back up its conclusions, it presented (2021-2030) has been announced to accelerate efforts to overwhelming evidence that the health of ecosystems is curb this phenomenon. deteriorating at an unprecedented rate. The degradation of life on the planet will also be Human activities are now threatening more at the heart of several key meetings planned in 2021, animal and plant species with extinction worldwide including the World Conservation Congress organized than ever before in history, the experts of this “IPCC by the International Congress for Conservation of Nature (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) of (IUCN) in Marseille, France, in September. biodiversity” noted. Another crucial meeting, the Conference of the Parties Humans have significantly modified no less than to the Convention on Biological Diversity, COP 15, will be three quarters of the terrestrial environment and almost held in Kunming, China, in October. sixty-six per cent of the marine environment. And of The 196 parties to the Convention will have the task the 8 million species listed on the planet, 1 million are of defining a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. already threatened with extinction. This means that one They will set the course for the international community in eight animal or plant species is likely to disappear in to improve the protection of ecosystems by 2050. the coming years. Integrating