UNESCO, which occasionally likes to remind us that the Earth is not yet an open-air shopping centre, just because there are still shops to rent inside it, has decided to add 26 new biosphere reserves to its global collection. That makes a total of 785, spread across 142 countries, like stickers in an album that no one will ever complete because the last one is on sale at Sotheby's auction prices.

The new entries are places where nature stubbornly resists our suicidal enthusiasm. There is an Indonesian archipelago that alone is home to three-quarters of the Earth's corals (while the others, from the Seychelles to the Andaman Islands, are home to three-quarters of the plastic produced in the world). There is a piece of Iceland that concentrates 70% of the national flora — probably because the rest of the country is just volcanoes, sheep and craft gin.

And then there is Angola, where the new Quiçama reserve brings together savannahs, estuaries, elephants, manatees and farmers who raise cows and produce honey, hoping that no one will evict them in the name of biodiversity.

The underlying idea is both brilliant and desperate: to protect nature without forgetting that people live there. So the biosphere is not just jaguars and flamingos, but also tourists with binoculars and fishermen who until yesterday were throwing dynamite into the sea and today are improvising as fish farmers thanks to scientists in lab coats. ‘This way they have food and also fish to sell in the markets,’ said a UNESCO official. A phrase that sounds a lot like: first we starve the coral reefs, then we do charity with aquaculture.

If we then look at what is happening to the Arabuko Sokoke forest in Watamu, after it was declared a biosphere, we can sleep peacefully, like the Chinese company that is conducting surveys on rare earths in the subsoil, and the timber poachers who are cutting down native species of centuries-old trees.

In the rest of Africa, however, stories of hope and despair alternate. São Tomé and Príncipe, for example, has decided to transform itself entirely into a biosphere reserve. A practical move: this way, there is no longer any need to distinguish between what is protected and what is already on sale.

But then there is Nigeria, where the Omo Forest Reserve, one of the oldest on the continent, is home to the last African forest elephants. Unfortunately, it is also the perfect terrain for planting cocoa. Nature versus chocolate: guess who wins.

Meanwhile, UNESCO announces ten-year plans, digitised databases and satellites to monitor disasters. Wonderful. Too bad that 60% of reserves are already affected by storms, droughts and rising sea levels, like prices in an inflationary supermarket.

And while humanity juggles between saving mangroves and selling dugong-shaped souvenirs, on the other side of the ocean, Trump (who never disappoints) has announced that the United States will leave UNESCO in 2026. Because protecting the biosphere is fine, but only if it doesn't interfere with the 4th of July barbecue.

After all, the message is clear: nature must be respected, but only as long as it does not hinder the economy. Then, if there is time, we put it in a display case, like a dusty trophy, and write on it: There was once life here.