If we were in an action movie, this question would make sense and would create suspense in the minds of movie lovers. However, although we are not in front of a Hollywood production, this question should hold the attention of the public opinion from the state actors to the civil society through the private sector. This question is the issue that almost all southern countries, reservoir of global biodiversity, ask themselves each time they are about to make a major decision. This simple question becomes enigmatic when one must balance between conserving 20,000 hectares of intact forest for the benefit of wildlife conservation (and biodiversity) and its habitat or leasing it to an agro-industry that will completely raze it to cultivate oil palm, rubber, cocoa or plantain banana. While the first option is ecologically beneficial, decision-makers almost always favor the second option. The arguments put forward are job creation, foreign exchange earnings from the sale of agricultural products, taxes and infrastructure development that accompany similar projects. These arguments tend to tip the balance in favor of development over conservation. So how do we remedy the spread of this misconception?

The Rio conference marked the start of a global policy to protect biodiversity as a whole. Many countries set ambitious goals for safeguarding the environment, combating climate change and protecting the livelihoods of indigenous communities dependent on forest resources. Now, three decades later, not much progress has been made. The Amazon continues to see its surface shrink while the Congo Basin is now part of this dynamic of large-scale deforestation. However, local, national and sub-regional initiatives are springing up everywhere to ensure the conservation of biodiversity. The only problem is that they do not manage to answer the question we asked ourselves above. After Rio, the Kyoto Protocol, the Nagoya Protocol and REDD+ were presented as mechanisms to compensate for the conservation efforts undertaken by the countries of the South.Most of these mechanisms are based on the fact that the countries of the North, which are already developed, must transfer skills, financial resources and technologies to the countries of the South in order to avoid a development trajectory that aims to eliminate their forest areas. Unfortunately, these mechanisms have been abandoned for some and are struggling to take off for others due to the bureaucracy that frames them, to the weak will of the Northern countries to make efforts and further to the thirst of the Southern countries to exploit their resources, to the detriment of biodiversity if necessary.

While this institutional debate is taking place at the highest levels of the world, it is important to stop for 10 minutes and return to the local populations and indigenous peoples who depend on forest resources. Indeed, decisions are generally taken in a way that is disconnected from these disadvantaged groups who nevertheless participate actively in the conservation and development of biological resources. Most of them live below the poverty line and lack the minimum necessary to survive. In the forest regions of the South, it is common to travel fifty kilometers to find a hospital that sometimes has only one nurse with insufficient medication. The schools are absent, the leisure centers non-existent and the only available jobs are in agriculture and animal husbandry. The isolation of these areas makes it difficult to sell agricultural products and it is therefore very easy for these communities, who dream of a better life for their families, to be tempted by poaching, illegal logging or to be favorable to large-scale deforestation projects as long as they offer alternatives for better living conditions.

Eco-tourism is often presented as the main alternative offered by biodiversity conservation, but it is still poorly known in some forest areas and does not receive the necessary attention to be a real driver of local development. It is therefore imperative to quickly rethink biodiversity conservation in a context of extreme poverty and to help local communities choose the right answer for the planet, for current and future generations, for all of our futures.

I therefore ask you to help me choose biodiversity conservation and local development, as long as it is sustainable and concerned with the well-being of our common home, the earth!