Biodiversity: Why Preserving Nature Costs Less Than Destroying It
One euro invested in restoring nature returns eight. This ratio, as striking as it is counterintuitive for many economic decision-makers, sits at the heart of an interview given by biologist Tatiana Giraud, a CNRS research director, evolutionary biology researcher and member of the French Academy of Sciences, to Le Monde's "Chaleur humaine" podcast.
10/13/20263 min read
Biodiversity: Why Preserving Nature Costs Less Than Destroying It
One euro invested in restoring nature returns eight. This ratio, as striking as it is counterintuitive for many economic decision-makers, sits at the heart of an interview given by biologist Tatiana Giraud, a CNRS research director, evolutionary biology researcher and member of the French Academy of Sciences, to Le Monde's "Chaleur humaine" podcast. It's a figure worth taking seriously, as it overturns a still-dominant economic reasoning: treating nature protection as a cost rather than a profitable investment.
A Misunderstood Biodiversity Is a Poorly Protected One
Giraud's first point is that our collective picture of biodiversity is misleading. When people think "nature at risk," they instinctively picture emblematic species, elephants, polar bears, baby seals. Yet if biodiversity is measured by the number of described species, insects overwhelmingly dominate the animal kingdom, followed by fungi and microorganisms, whose diversity remains largely undocumented. If measured instead by total biomass, what different groups actually weigh on Earth, plants dwarf everything else. In both cases, mammals, and wild mammals in particular, represent only a tiny fraction of living matter.
This media and emotional focus on a handful of charismatic species has a perverse effect: it obscures the real scale of the ongoing collapse, which hits insects, microorganisms and the ecosystems that sustain the whole system first, pollination, soil fertility, water regulation, carbon cycles.
The Economic Lever: Redirecting Subsidies Rather Than Multiplying Them
Faced with this situation, Giraud doesn't primarily call for more funding, she calls for redirecting existing subsidies: less toward intensive livestock farming, more toward organic agriculture, paired with structured support for farmers through the transition. This reframes the debate from moral ground to economic ground, and it aligns with the available data on the return on investment of nature restoration.
Converging Data, Beyond the Interview
Several independent analyses confirm the order of magnitude Giraud cites:
The European Commission estimates that one euro invested in ecosystem restoration generates around eight euros in benefits, linked to the services a healthy ecosystem provides (a figure also cited by France Nature Environnement).
A study commissioned by WWF, Natuurpunt and Natagora on three Belgian nature restoration projects measured a socio-economic return ranging from 8 to 51 euros per euro invested, depending on the site.
The EU's LEADER programme cites economic returns of 8 to 38 euros per euro invested in land restoration.
A study published in Cell Reports Sustainability, covering 83 ecosystem preservation actions, puts the average return of nature-based solutions at 2.8 euros per euro invested.
Beyond methodological differences between these studies, the signal is consistent: restoring nature is not a cost center, it is an investment generating a measurable socio-economic return, through water infiltration and regulation, flood and drought prevention, tourism, and agricultural resilience.
What This Means for the Textile Industry
For a sector like textiles, whose raw materials depend directly on soil health, water availability and, for natural fibers, pollination, this finding is far from theoretical. A cotton or linen supply chain built on depleted soils and degraded ecosystems undermines its own supply chain over the medium term. Investing in agro-ecosystem restoration is therefore not just an environmental contribution, it is a raw-material supply security measure.
The ITBA-AIBT Analysis
This interview illustrates a paradigm shift the Alliance actively encourages among its members: moving biodiversity out of the CSR-communication frame and treating it instead as an economic asset to be preserved, on par with human or industrial capital. Giraud's message is clear, the point isn't necessarily to spend more, but to redirect existing funding toward practices that regenerate resources rather than deplete them.
That is precisely the logic behind FiberForever™ certification: recognizing companies that structure their model around resource regeneration, soil, water, biodiversity, rather than extraction alone. A euro spent on transition today is not an expense; according to the scientific evidence itself, it is one of the most profitable investments a supply chain can make to secure its future.
Source: Tatiana Giraud, interview for the "Chaleur humaine" podcast, Le Monde, 15 August 2026. Additional data: European Commission / France Nature Environnement; WWF-Natuurpunt-Natagora (VITO); European LEADER network; Cell Reports Sustainability.
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