Floods, Crop Loss, Disease: “Biodiversity Collapse’s Impact is Starkly Real”

Over one million species are at risk of extinction on Earth, which represents about one in eight. The five main reasons for this collapse of life include habitat destruction, overexploitation of resources, pollution, climate change, and the introduction of exotic species into environments.

While these alarming figures are known, did you know that insects account for half (1.05 million) of the recorded species? That there are more living organisms in a teaspoon of soil than humans on Earth? And that it would likely take 3 to 7 million years, in “optimistic” scenarios, to recover the biodiversity that existed before human disturbance?

These statistics and many others are presented in an educational manner in “Biodiversity in Infographics” (Tana Editions), released on March 12, 2026. Tatiana Giraud, a biologist and research director at the National Center for Scientific Research and a member of the Academy of Sciences, accompanies these over 200 infographics with texts that explain the complexity of biodiversity, reject the false promises of technosolutionism, and conclude that the solution must necessarily be systemic, especially in agriculture.

Decatur Metro — How do you explain that the collapse of biodiversity struggles to capture the attention of the general public and the media, and that the subject mobilizes far less, for example, than the climate emergency?

Tatiana Giraud — Firstly because the issue emerged more recently, and also because it is more complex. With climate, one can focus on a single variable and a measurable goal, such as greenhouse gas emissions. For biodiversity, there is no such simple variable, and we don’t even know how to measure hypercomplex ecosystems.

Perhaps also because climate is explained by physicists, people seen as more serious by the public than researchers working on disappearing birds or butterflies. These latter can be dismissed as sentimental and perhaps more easily denied in terms of the severity of the issue.

Yet, the consequences of biodiversity loss are already very concrete for people: floods, increased diseases in crops, decreased agricultural production due to loss of soil fertility, all of this is linked to the collapse of biodiversity. But the media almost never explain this connection. For example, very few media outlets contextualize floods with the disappearance of wetlands.

There is also a rise in reassuring rhetoric and attacks against the scientific consensus on biodiversity collapse. Do you fear the emergence of counter-movements similar to the climate skepticism movement aimed at delaying action?

There are more attacks because the subject is increasingly discussed, which can be seen as encouraging. However, it’s true that we see a rise in denialist rhetoric, which contests the collapse of biodiversity in Europe. The focus is shifted to measurement indices, attention is concentrated on minor counter-examples to discredit the overall findings. Or attention is diverted from the damage of pesticides, for instance, by emphasizing the impact of cats or invasive species on biodiversity…

These are the same mechanisms of doubt manufacture seen in climate discussions. There could even be more denial about biodiversity because, unlike climate issues, which can be purportedly addressed through purely technical solutions, biodiversity requires acknowledging the need for radical changes.

It’s more complicated to ignore the issues of biodiversity, which cannot be reduced to a single metric: protecting habitats, stopping pesticide use, etc. are clearly systemic changes, and that creates resistance.

The allure of purely technological solutions for preserving biodiversity is still gaining ground, which you criticize in your book…

Take the example of seed banks or seed reserves. Many ecologists initially saw this as a positive initiative, a safety net to preserve species. But these seeds are like dead, they no longer coevolve with environmental pathogens. They can never be reintroduced into an environment that will no longer be suitable for them since we continue to destroy their climate, soil fertility, and the insects they depend on.

This kind of approach treats biodiversity like a stamp collection. But if we understand that everything is interlinked, that the absence of a single species can destabilize the whole ecosystem, the only solution that emerges is to preserve the overall balance.

The same goes for the fantasies of de-extinction, of resurrecting extinct species. Firstly, it’s a false promise, changing just a few genes to make a slightly larger pigeon that doesn’t fly, but it doesn’t recreate a real dodo. And then, we will never create enough individuals for a viable ecological population.

These technologies involve a lot of money, which would be infinitely more beneficial for biodiversity if it were used to subsidize organic agriculture or replanting hedges, for example.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are a textbook case of technosolutionist propaganda. Does the arrival of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) make you fear new harmful effects on biodiversity?

Twenty years ago, we were promised that GMOs would help feed the world and reduce pesticide use. Even among scientists, this is debated. Some believe that GMOs can help us buy time, to cultivate with fewer pesticides while we change models. In reality, GMOs do the opposite: they lock in the system. Most of them promote pesticide use because it’s the most profitable economic model.

NGTs seek to bypass regulations and appear less frightening to people by omitting the GMO term. These technologies claim to be less risky because they target specific genes to modify in the genome more precisely, but this precision can be very harmful: the modification is so undetectable that it could become impossible to determine whether a variety was obtained genetically or conventionally.

That’s what happened with a recent case. The danger is seeing large companies increasingly threaten small seed producers, appropriating life itself and continuously reducing biodiversity through these technologies.

Sometimes we speak of a “sixth mass extinction” in Earth’s history, but it is not yet a reality. How can we convey the urgency and gravity of the situation?

The current rate of species extinction is higher, 10 to 100 times for certain groups of species, than that of the last major mass extinction [which led to the disappearance of dinosaurs 65 million years ago]. So we are heading in that direction, even though it has fortunately not yet occurred.

And the rate of collapse is not the only important indicator: species that are not extinct yet see their populations collapse. A population that is too small no longer has enough diversity to survive in the long term because its individuals become inbred, fail to adapt, or find enough sexual partners.

We are entering an “extinction vortex.” Many species of birds or insects, for example, may already be in this vortex and doomed to disappear.