On the occasion of AXA’s Corporate Responsibility Week and the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, the AXA Research Fund was pleased to host Prof. Dirk Schmeller's webinar: Biodiversity at Risk.

Nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history with severe impacts on biodiversity and human health threatening the livelihood of more than 50% of the human population.

In this webinar, Prof. Dirk Schmeller helps us understand complexity of biodiversity, the services it provides, current threats and how they impact humankind.

Prof. Dirk Schmeller answered your questions at the end of the webinar, but also below.

How can we avoid best the pressure on biodiversity from a growing population?

This is a simple, but difficult to answer question. The increasing human population asks for more resources and those will be harbored in nature, and leading to its destruction. In an urgent first step, we need to create absolute sanctuaries of key biodiversity hotspots to save these unique regions. We then need to rethink our exploitation strategies and need to transform our society to be sustainably using natural resources. The latter will ask for many sacrifices, but is necessary for a soft landing in the current slow motion crises climate change and biodiversity loss.

 How could we educate the young generations? Do you think that courses and/or training could be proposed at school?

There is already education in schools and universities around climate change and biodiversity loss, likely also the reason for the Fridays For Future movement. Generalizing such courses would be one course of action, but may also have the problem to cause dispair amongst our young generation. So, educational plans would need to be carefully balanced. However, what would be way more important is the education of 40 to 70 year old. Those are considered to having the strongest impact, but also the highest potential to make important decisions.