The document says nothing about flowers or elephants. The report published on Wednesday, December 18, by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the biodiversity equivalent of the IPCC, deals with economic inequalities, modes of consumption and production, and value systems.

This "summary for policymakers," approved by representatives from 147 countries at a plenary meeting in Namibia, is the fruit of three years' work by around 100 experts from around the world to define "transformative changes" and identify the obstacles to their implementation, as well as strategies for accelerating progress toward "a just and sustainable world."

The expression "transformative change," which could be understood as a pleonasm – a sort of ready-made formula repeated from report to report by international organizations – actually has an eminently political significance, as shown by this report published in the wake of an assessment of the close interactions between the biodiversity, health, water, food and climate crises.

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