YAAC Talk #4: biodiversity, the invisible pillar of our economies

On 23 May 2026, the Youth Alliance for Agroecology and Climate held its fourth YAAC Talk, on a gap that is rarely named: “Biodiversity, the invisible pillar of our economies.”

Invisible, because it appears on no balance sheet. A pillar, because farming, livestock, food, health and the capacity to absorb a climate shock all rest on it. That gap — between what living systems produce and what accounting records — was the subject of the session.

Capital, not scenery

Biodiversity is not merely the variety of species. It is natural capital that entire economic activities depend on — capital we draw down without recording it anywhere, and whose value we measure only once it is gone.

The ecologist Robert Barbault put it plainly, and his sentence opened the discussion:

“The economy must align itself with the laws of nature.”

Understanding that dependency is not a theoretical exercise. It is the precondition for development models that hold up in Africa, where crop yields, food security and public health depend directly on the state of ecosystems.

Two sequences: the assessment, then the levers

The first part established the technical picture: what biodiversity contributes to production systems, and what environmental change is doing to it.

The second moved the question to young people. Protecting living systems is not about documenting their disappearance. It is about surfacing solutions, training, and giving young people the means to act on farming and development.

That is the sense of the words of Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, quoted during the session:

“If you have not planted, grown and kept a tree alive, you have never done anything.”

Three perspectives on one subject

For this edition, YAAC brought together speakers from research and from the field:

• Odilon-Parfait Akotchayé, researcher, plant biotechnologist and founder of SESAM+;
• Prof. Antoine Missihoun, lecturer and researcher in genetics, molecular biology and genomics;
• Fréjus Tanguy Zinsou, researcher and consultant in animal production, climate change and rural development.

Three entry points — the plant, the gene, the animal and rural life — into a question too often approached from a single angle.

A development question, not only an environmental one

Protecting biodiversity is a matter of food security, innovation and economics as much as ecology. That is also what makes the subject workable: it does not ask anyone to choose between development and conservation; it shows that the second is a condition of the first.

The philosopher Virginie Maris reverses the burden of proof:

“To those who ask: why protect biodiversity? The answer should be: why destroy it?”

The conversation does not end with the session. It continues through the work of everyone building a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive Africa.