Biodiversity - What it is and why it matters
A COP26 and beyond interview with Dr Rich Young, Director of Conservation Knowledge, Durell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
On 13 September 2022 we finally caught up with Dr Rich Young, Director of Conservation Knowledge at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, and were privileged to be able to interview him for COP26 and beyond about Biodiversity, and its place within the climate debate.
Dr Rich Young has a PhD in wildlife biology. He has worked on conservation projects in Europe and Africa. He has been with the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust since 2005, and as Director of Conservation Knowledge, leads its Science, Effectiveness, and Training Teams, including the international conservation training programme at the Durrell Academy in Jersey, online, and on the ground in Mauritius and Madagascar.
COP26andBeyond: The IPBES reports speak of a loss of a million species: can you give us a sense of the big picture on Biodiversity internationally?
Dr Rich Young: We know that a high proportion of known species are threatened with extinction – 40% of amphibians, 25% of mammals, 90% of all lemurs. This follows years of progressive declines in species numbers. In some areas, the problem is particularly acute, for example, SouthEast Asia, resulting from agricultural deforestation. In Madagascar, only 13%-14% of the forest is left.
Extinction is a natural process. There have been five major extinctions in the history of the world to date, and we are now in the midst of the sixth. Although our work at the Durrell Trust is largely terrestrial, the same thing is happening in the oceans, for example through overfishing, with coral reefs. The global picture is bleak, but there are some local pictures of hope.
Ring-tailed Lemur
Can you help us articulate why the loss of a single species matters? This seems to be one of the keys to being able to communicate the urgency of Biodiversity loss as a whole. For example, on a recent visit to Jersey we noted Gerald Durrell’s quote that “The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider’s web. If you touch one thread you send shudders running through all the other threads. We are not just touching the web we are tearing great holes in it”.
We sometimes illustrate this by reference to the Horseshoe Crab, which turns out to be essential to birds which are migrating from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, and then turns out to have blue blood which is harvested as a marker for endotoxins, and essential to surgery, and even vaccines against COVID. But visiting Jersey Zoo to see the incredible conservation work, we were trying to pin down the real importance to humanity of the Bali Mynah bird, Madagascar’s Boki-Boki, its Fody, its Ploughshare Tortoise or the Montserrat Mountain Chicken Frog...
I would argue that each species has an intrinsic value, that sometimes gets lost in utilitarian debates. Species are intrinsically valuable and have taken millions of years to evolve.
Biodiversity benefits are often unexpected. The more diverse the biodiversity, the greater its resilience – we can see that for example with agricultural crops when a threat to staples often sends people back to wild varieties to look for remedies.
The interactions between species and the dependency of one species on another are also often not understood.
Many species also confer direct benefits, whether medical, aesthetic, or cultural. They are part of a country’s national culture. The health and well-being aspects of nature are also extremely important.
Madagascan Red Fody
How do you show the benefits of conservation to local communities, so that it is not just an external concern but something that they can see is relevant to their own lives?
The Durrell Trust works around the world at the invitation of local parties, governments, local governments, and local organisations. I would not phrase it as “showing” the benefits to local communities. Many local communities and organisations take the lead, whether it is their need for sustainable use of natural resources or nature conservation. For example in Madagascar, we work hand in hand with local communities and charities to co-manage some of the most important sites for biodiversity There are national and international laws about conservation, but morally and effectively, conservation is only effective with local support and drivers.
With the policy and legal response to these problems, how effective is the Convention on Biological Diversity, and where does it need to be strengthened and improved? For example, we had an article on our website from Dr Richard Benwell CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link comparing the machinery of the Convention on Biological Diversity unfavourably to the UNFCCC climate treaties, and arguing that it lacked interim targets and commitments.
My work is not chiefly concerned with policy, and I am not directly involved in the negotiation of the CBD, but previous iterations have been weak on ambition. We need to raise ambition and talk about nature recovery. For example the ’30 x 30 by 2030’ commitment to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030, delivered at the national level, may be a ‘blunt’ goal, but it is more ambitious than earlier and past approaches that simply have not worked.
There are no sanctions for non-compliance, there is patchy reporting under existing provisions requiring it from signatory parties, and there is no money to support the machinery. The next COP (at Montreal in December 2022) needs ambitious targets, resources, and sanctions for non-compliance.
We have tried in past blogs to underline the links between Biodiversity and Climate Change, and the need for the Conventions to converge and support each other. Could you give us an example of how these are two sides of the same coin?
It is sometimes difficult to attribute specifically, but one example would be the long-term drought in Madagascar. The long-term ‘aridification’ of the whole region is resulting in very poor people moving North, and into protected conservation areas which have weak governance. It is led by demand for people to be able to grow cash crops, such as peanuts and maize, putting even more pressure on forests.
We recently saw the first mammal extinction attributed to climate change. This was the Bramble Cay Melamys, a rodent endemic to Australia that was only found on a single island. That island is now regularly inundated due to rising sea levels, and the mammal species is now almost certainly extinct.
We should also remember, though that nature affects climate change very significantly, whether through forests, or peatlands. The emphasis on ‘nature-based solutions’ at COP26 was significant.
Can you tell us a bit about Biodiversity and Education, and your work in training the next generation of conservation leaders?
The Jersey training centre has led the work in training about 6,000 young leaders, from almost all the countries in the world, in conservation theory and practice, endangered species recovery, habitat conservation. There is the Academy in Jersey, an on-line training facility, and training initiatives in Mauritius and Madagascar. We have focussed on early career individuals. Some are already working, but there is also continuing Professional Development Support.
https://www.durrell.org/conservation/learning/future-conservationists/
Apart from this phenomenal work for real specialists in conservation theory and practice, how would you help involve young people more widely in addressing Biodiversity with the same energy and skills that they already use to address climate change?
For example, MOCK COP is going to send two young Canadian climate activists to the negotiations in Montreal on the Convention on Biological Diversity? How can we best promote, encourage and inform this?
With climate change, the issues are ‘relatively’ simple concepts. We can see that carbon emissions have particular effects. The destruction of nature is a bit more complex. It can be harder to get the message out. Young people understand it on an emotional level, and just need to arm themselves with the facts.
We need to re-frame the debate. Nature is not ‘external to us’. The ‘environment’ is what we actually live in. Without forests, mangroves, and many other aspects of nature, the planet will quite quickly become uninhabitable.