We must convince and empower people to adopt the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity as their guiding principle.

Most of all, Creation must be protected for its own sake, even if we currently assign no value or an incorrect value to it.

It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependent on basic natural resources - land, air, water and biodiversity - for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment.

The gains made by better management and technology are still being outpaced by the environmental impacts of population and economic growth. We are on an unsustainable course.

It's difficult to protect something if it doesn't have a price.

I am a great supporter of bionics and this diversity in nature, this genetic diversity, is not available for free. We, as industrialized nations, have already sinned enough, and we have significantly reduced biodiversity in our countries. But now we expect the poor, less developed countries of the world to preserve their rainforests, mangrove forests and coral landscapes for us at no charge.

That's precisely the reason we need less paper and more concrete political decisions - the protection of endangeres species is not some luxury item by Gucci or Hermès, for people who have no problems.