3 months on...

I've been writing this blog for about three months now, and looked at a few different aspects of the biodiversity/extinction crisis. So I think it would be good to sum up my thoughts so far, and maybe look back at the first post and see if I’m able to answer the questions I asked all that time ago in October.

• How likely is it that we can slow down the rate of biodiversity loss and extinction?
• What exactly will the consequences be if we don’t?

And whilst I feel like I've learnt a lot from the research I've been doing, I don’t think I’ve found any concrete answers to the issues I was looking at (oops). In fact, my main conclusion is that the whole issue of biodiversity loss is a lot more complicated than I had thought, but that seems to be a running theme in most of my studies. It is precisely this reason that I remain sceptical of our ability to meet the CBD’s Aichi biodiversity targets and similar measures, as the solutions, like the problem, are extremely complex.

What has become clear to me about biodiversity loss is that there’s still so much that we don’t know about the biotic response to climate change. As I discussed when looking into paleoenvironmental studies, past extinction records show us that the survival of species is hard to predict, as is the response of ecosystems to climate change. Whilst we can look to the past to inform us on potential responses, we will always be somewhat in the dark due to the unprecedented nature of the speed of anthropogenic climate change. Like with coral reefs, we don't necessarily know if ecosystems will collapse or if they will change into a different structure, how much damage they can withstand, or even if technology will advance to be able to protect them in ways that we haven't even thought of. 

In terms of society slowing down (or even stopping) the rate of biodiversity loss, there seems to be two sides to what I’ve read. On the one hand, there is much research on the loss that we will experience, with the Living Planet Report predicting massive losses in the not-too-distant future. And as I recently wrote about, climate change is already causing localised extinctions in many parts of the world. On the other hand, there is a lot of positive work being done on stemming losses and improving the prospects for biodiversity, like the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland, and the recognition of the importance of creating connected protected areas to boost wildlife. Whilst the media portrays the prospects for wildlife as constantly dire, and this is often right, there are themes of resilience and hope coming through from many species.

So I come away from this a bit more confused about what's going to happen to the world's biodiversity under climate change, perhaps rightly so - it's always hard to know exactly how the Earth system will react to changes. And even if we could comprehensively predict the biotic response to climate change, it is crucial that we do not ignore the numerous other threats to species around the world.

At the same time, I'm inspired by the progress that science is making in both recognising the importance of this issue (I struggle to remember much that I've read whilst putting together these posts that didn't outline biodiversity loss as one of the major threats of the current period), and working towards proactive strategies that can maintain biodiversity. I think that one of the important things to consider with what we know about the risk to biodiversity is that it should be a reminder that climate change will not only impact our species, but will affect all ecosystems which in turn, will affect us.