Month: July 2020

A WORD FROM THE CESAB SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR

 

Nicolas Mouquet

 

We have all been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if it is too early to decipher the conditions that triggered the emergence of the coronavirus, it is, as other major epidemics, related to the environmental and biodiversity crisis we are experiencing.

 

Prevention could have been possible but they waited for the crisis to appear before acting. Prevention should be at the basis of our collective behavior, prevention and not fear! Prevention requires that we take the time to understand the world and synthesize complex information into meaningful and useful collective knowledge. What is true for the pandemics is true for the ongoing biodiversity crisis. The need for synthesis has never been so strong, synthesis is the only way of fueling appropriate actions. Furthermore, the timescale needed to achieve adequate and reliable synthesis is far longer than the rapid appearance of human-caused crisis. Synthesis must happen before!

 

Edward O. Wilson once said that the world would be run by “synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely”. For once, he was wrong, the world is not run by synthesizers, it is run by people that base their actions on incomplete information, are behind the limes, do not think critically and do not make wise choices ! This is why, today, we need synthesizers more than ever, and yet I do not see very much of collective effort to support synthesis in the agenda of research funding agencies. At our very small scale, synthesis centres, such as CESAB, are trying to promote the art of synthesis in biodiversity science but the level of funding we are receiving is inversely proportional to the importance of our mission.

 

After every crisis, we hear voices saying that the “world will never be the same again”. This is not true, a simple synthesis of crises during the 20th century show the exact opposite pattern. However, this does not mean that we have to give up, but rather that we need to understand and remember: we must synthesize !

 

Nicolas Mouquet