WT55 – Management of ecosystems and biodiversity

Workshop presentation

Since the industrial revolution, influenced by a philosophical approach that led man to behave as master of nature rather than as an integral part of the biosphere, our societies have lost the habit and the capacity to manage ecosystems as a whole. Under the influence of the physical sciences and a mechanistic approach to nature, a habit was developed of intervening on an ad hoc basis and on a large scale without taking into account the multiple interactions of living systems. Chemical-based agriculture is a good example of this approach in which soils are fertilised and plants protected by chemical means, without consideration for the complex mechanisms of fertility or the conservation of water or of biodiversity. Everyone recognises today that this brutal and incompetent management of ecosystems threatens our survival in the long term. The loss of wild and domestic biodiversity is depriving humanity and ecosystems of their capacity to adapt and exposing them to unprecedented disasters. Recently, the introduction into the natural environment of genetically modified organisms, which are spreading slowly but surely, is exposing us to unpredictable long-term consequences. The administrative system of regional management, compartmentalised into all sorts of administrations and many tiers of governance is itself far from conducive to an integrated management of ecosystems. Scientific studies have shown that it was wrong to hope that we could artificially maintain domestic biodiversity by gene banks and wild biodiversity by confining it to nature reserves.

In China and in Europe a reaction, albeit a timid one, is emerging. It implies for the public authorities new types of relationship with citizens in order to preserve ecosystems at different scales and in order to manage domestic and wild biodiversity. The management of ecosystems is a huge area of innovation which questions at the same time our forms of governance, our scientific approaches and our legal framework, for example in relation to the privatisation of living organisations. The aim of the workshop will be to compare European and Chinese experiences, to identify those with good future prospects, and to define the most promising forms of cooperation in these spheres for the decades to come.