Avec la biodiversité, nous vivons dans un réseau social géant
Sans biodiversité, pas de vie humaine. Les végétaux et les animaux ont tous une utilité, qu’on peut appeler «contribution de la nature à l’homme».
Le sujet de la thèse de Pierre-Louis Rey, qu'il réalise à l'Université de Lausanne, c’est d’étudier l’apport des espèces à l’humain. Et il peut autant vous parler d’un simple brin d’herbe comme du sapin, ou du canard au bord du lac et du bouquetin perché sur ses falaises.
Le sujet de la thèse de Pierre-Louis Rey, qu'il réalise à l'Université de Lausanne, c’est d’étudier l’apport des espèces à l’humain. Et il peut autant vous parler d’un simple brin d’herbe comme du sapin, ou du canard au bord du lac et du bouquetin perché sur ses falaises.
Transcript
00:00 And for you, what is a tree? It's just a prickly tree.
00:02 Well, it's much more than that.
00:04 And it's the same for all living beings.
00:06 After identifying more than 30,000 relations between animal, plant and human species,
00:11 I will explain what I did, because that's the subject of my thesis.
00:14 (Femme Science)
00:16 You probably know it, without biodiversity, no human life.
00:18 Plants and animals all have a utility that can be called the contribution of nature to man.
00:23 The idea is to study the contribution of species to humans.
00:27 I can tell you about a simple grass arm, like a tree, or a duck by the lake,
00:32 and a pear tree perched on top of its cliff.
00:35 Come on, don't you want to shit, Bella?
00:37 All this to establish a kind of huge social network,
00:40 the largest table of relations known to date between the functions of more than 2,000 species and the well-being of humans.
00:45 Finally, biodiversity is just a huge Facebook where everyone could create a link with everyone.
00:51 And if there is one place to illustrate all this, it is on Pandora, the exo-moon of Avatar.
00:55 For example, Aiwa, the divinity of the Navi.
00:58 It is a spiritual tree that also serves for healing and communication.
01:02 The scientists of the film try to understand its functioning and its contribution to the balance of the ecosystem.
01:07 You can imagine that my job is to find the functions of each of these species, like with Aiwa.
01:13 But on Earth.
01:14 Except that on Earth, and even to be more precise, in Switzerland,
01:17 we never gathered all this knowledge to identify our relationship with the species.
01:22 Without even having to link your horse's tail to its branch, with my work,
01:26 you will know that the EPICEA can be useful for heating, construction, therapeutic care,
01:31 CO2 capture or to limit landslides.
01:34 There, I gave you 5 contributions of the EPICEA to humans.
01:37 But in total, we have more than 30,000 relations between these 2,000 species and humans.
01:42 With this basis, you will realize that all species are essential to our balance and our environment.
01:48 And here, the question that is annoying. Is this balance is bankable for the future or not?
01:53 It's true, with global warming and the disappearance of some of these species, the question is, after all.
01:58 The answer is obtained by means of statistics,
02:00 by modeling where all these species will be in the future, depending on different climatic scenarios.
02:06 These maps of the future allow us to know where the balance of our environment will be in danger or not.
02:12 And if its functioning will be modified because of emigration or the disappearance of species from our territory.
02:19 The first results show that with global warming, whether strong or very strong,
02:23 this balance will change and humans will lose in quality of life with a decrease in the contribution of nature.
02:29 CATASTROPHIC
02:31 You will understand, I'm not talking about an avatar spin-off, but about our real world.
02:35 So yes, it's important to limit our CO2 emissions, to protect polar bears and their penguins,
02:40 but that's not enough. If we want to maintain a balance and our well-being,
02:44 all species, and even the most basic ones like the simple pythondi, must be taken into account.
02:48 And that, on Pandora, they understood it well.
02:51 (upbeat music)
02:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]