Adopted Monday at the 23e hour after heated debates at COP15 in Montreal, the global agreement on biodiversity has not reached all its targets, but what progress! This pact initialed by delegates from 150 countries aiming to preserve 30% of water and land, with increased funding, will help poor states to tackle the labors of Hercules. Because whole countries are becoming desert, pushing people into exile. And who in the North welcomes migrants with open arms? In addition, the traditional knowledge of Aboriginal peoples and local communities is recognized on paper for the rest of the world. A breakthrough, we hope, not symbolic. Words sometimes fly away without landing anywhere.
Of course, the concrete changes will depend on the goodwill of each country with ifs and maybes. It remains to be seen whether the historic agreement will be able to pierce the wall of collective negligence, but even the multinationals are put up against the wall. An already enormous step on a planet of unbridled political and commercial rivalries.
One thing is certain, the notion of biodiversity imposed itself on people’s consciences during this Montreal summit. Many made little difference between the issues of climate change and those of the extinction of plant and animal species.
Legitimate confusion, because in fact, everything is linked: pollution, greenhouse gases, pesticides, savage cutting in tropical or northern jungles for the benefit of lucrative industries, such as the disappearance of plants and animals that do not no longer know which blade of grass to cling to. But each threatened area, including biodiversity, requires its own corrective measures.
We plead guilty to the disaster. It is no coincidence that filmmaker Steven Spielberg lamented the impact of his film on Sunday jaws (1975) to a terrified audience. Sharks have been decimated, sometimes out of sheer bravado, causing a dramatic decline in the species. The COP15 effect pushed the American filmmaker to express his retroactive regrets at the end of the week. Having contributed, even unwittingly, to the decline of an animal species is enough to make an artist blush these days.
Far from the mysteries of theory, let’s also dive into the heart of the problem. To better understand and feel to what extent the food chain is affected by human negligence, to resonate with threatened natural beauty, a dazzling documentary has reached our theaters, a jewel for the eye and a beacon for the mind. Directed by Nova Scotian and Montrealer by adoption Jacquelyn Mills, Geographies of Solitudemulti-award winning, is both a visual poem, a mystique of life, a background work on biodiversity and the portrait of Zoe Lucas, committed woman, artist and naturalist.
This septuagenarian has lived more or less for forty years on the magnificent Sable Island (42 kilometers long) off the coast of Nova Scotia, documenting with infinite patience the ecosystem of the place, grains of sand included. Windy and uninhabited island, except by a handful of observers, wild horses, descendants of equines left behind in the 16e century, snort freely before dying a beautiful death, feeding on their remains, insects, birds and plants that grow on this silt, while seals bask in the dunes.
Captured by electrodes, the sound of the movements of snails on the sand, witnesses to the march of time, is combined with visual effects on plants directly on 16 mm film. Elsewhere, the filmmaker celebrates the splendor of this land of reeds and creeks as much as the precious work of Zoe Lucas.
You have to see the lady stir up horse dung in order to collect cockroaches, spiders and beetles for scientific establishments, count the animals, note their characteristics on her computer with innumerable data. How not to feel seized with admiration in front of the immense contribution of a single human being devoted to the cause of biodiversity?
But dead birds line up after an oil surge. No, civilization has not spared the island. Zoe Lucas collects in huge batches the burst balloons of parties and birthdays on the coast, as well as microplastics, bags, bottles, residues transported by the sea and the winds. Dangerous defused debris.
Through his quest, we touch the extent of the threats to which even virgin lands are confronted. This documentary, lyrical and realistic, a work of art and a summary of natural history, stirs by its grace and its charge more than all the UN summits. Thanks to him for making us embrace the fragile brilliance of an unloved blue planet.