What an ecologist learned observing COP15

This is a guest post from occasional contributor Emma Despland. If you’re like me, you know that UN conferences like COP15 (more formally, the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) are, but you’re a bit mystified about what goes on at one. Here Emma gives an ecologist’s perspective on both the process and the product of COP15. The agreement (provided that it’s followed, of course) has huge implications both for our planet and for our academic field. Read on for Emma’s impressions.

Last month, I attended COP15 in Montreal as part of my university’s delegation. I volunteered mainly out of curiosity and didn’t really know what to expect.

No, vineyards are not beautiful (a conservation conundrum)

Image: “Beautiful vineyard” by Sasmit68 via wikimedia.org, CC BY-SA 4.0

Last week I raised the apparently-dumb but actually rather interesting question of why humans consider flowers to be beautiful.  Today, another question about beauty, this time with (I’m afraid) really unfortunate consequences.  Have you ever heard someone talk about how beautiful a vineyard is?  Have you ever been that someone?  An awful lot of us would answer “yes” to both questions – and that’s a real problem for conservation.

It isn’t just vineyards, of course, and I’ll get to my broader point, but first I should back up my claim that humans think vineyards are beautiful – and that we shouldn’t.