20 Strategic objectives were selected for 2020

We are 7 billion people on earth within a single species. "Michel Brunet is unlimited on the history of man. In a sentence, the renowned Paleoanthropologist, discoverer of Toumaï, summarizes the triumph of Homo sapiens. In a few tens of thousands of years, a blink of an eye at the scale of the history of life on Earth, the human species has colonized most of the ecological niches in the world, even the most inhospitable. Michel Brunet just returned from the North of Chad, where he continued his research on our two-legged ancestors born on the African continent. "If we had five million years in Africa, it is because it is well liked."

In fact, it is probably a climate accident and an ability to adapt to the unique changes which gave to the human taste for exploration and travel. "A colder and drier climate has left an empty niche which we have benefited. We've gone from a wet tropical system to climate saisonnalisé, which has benefited the human, highly polymorphic species. "Humans have not missed this opportunity. "Our story started seven or eight million years ago, but our species dominates all others since only twenty thousand years.". "Yet, we are a group of mammals fairly banal", says the professor at the College of France.

At the end of October, the representatives of these primates omnivores and colonizing met in Nagoya, in Japan, the time for a Summit on biodiversity. Sapiens made his mea culpa. 20 Strategic objectives were selected for 2020. Objective: "to protect biodiversity and stop the rate of disappearance of species." After eight years of negotiations, the Nagoya Protocol should enter into force in 2012. It supports the protection of nature with a North-South financial mechanism whose effectiveness remains to be demonstrated. At the last minute, an agreement on biopiracy has even found. But the challenges are many: lack of integration into sectoral policies, lack of funding for research and the dissemination of knowledge, lack of networks and of influential partnerships and political awareness.

The success of the Natura 2000 network halftone illustrates these difficulties. Since 1992, he led the creation of 26,000 protected sites covering 18 of the area of the European Union. But this protection is not perfect: 53 of the habitats listed in the title of Natura 2000 are in State of conservation "adverse or bad", according to an analysis of France Nature environment. Same observation in Germany, where the network is "fragmented and threatened by a lack of buffers." Globally, the situation is even more worrying: animal or vegetable species disappear every twenty minutes.

It is in the Islands that the situation is both the most concern and the most interesting. "Madagascar is a perfect playing field," said Steven Goodman, biologist at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. According to him, the arrival of the man in the big island has a few thousand years has triggered an infernal cycle. Since its installation, the newcomer begins to hunt the herbivores, resulting in an increase in biomass. Later, the human Hunter causing forest fires which result in an extermination of wildlife. Result, at least 26 species of mammals have disappeared from Madagascar.

For plants, the causes are different but the conclusion is similar. At the meeting, the local flora is subject to "strong competition from introduced species that invade and degrade habitats most". According to the survey recently conducted by French researchers, 49 plant species have already disappeared and 275 others (30 of the total) are threatened. At the level of the planet, according to the latest census of the World Union of nature (IUCN), 16.928 species, that have been evaluated, 600,000 are clearly threatened of extinction, or between 12 and 15 of the groups of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants: a mammal on four, a volatile on eight, an amphibian on three, one-quarter of conifers growing on the planet and at least 34 ecosystems that are home to two thirds of terrestrial species.

These views attracted bitter comments on the part of researchers. "Without changes in behaviour, the future of our planet appears very dark", j. Steven Goodman, who advocates for the implementation of small projects taking into account the culture of local populations to save Madagascar wildlife. The old sage Michel Brunet, petri dish of African culture is similarly concerned for the future of his dear armed Biped of a brain of 1.500 cubic centimetres. "Try to do that we do not disappear due to a climate accident which we are responsible".