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. 

The climate change scapegoat…getting lost in the big picture?

I started off this blog with the (I guess mostly internal) assumption of climate change being the biggest risk to biodiversity loss in the long term - the thing that would tip us over the edge into the 6th mass extinction. And I think this is something that instinctively a lot of people would agree with. It's easier to pin the great losses predicted on some large, intangible process rather than face up to the smaller more actionable causes, and climate change has been frequently stated as the biggest threat to the planet (see countless articles along the lines of “22 times the Obama administration declared climate change a bigger threat than terrorism”).

Perhaps this is why I started off thinking I would be investigating whether climate change was costing us our biodiversity, but found myself from week to week looking at individual species or ecosystems a lot of the time. Maybe it's because in one of my other modules I've been looking at large-scale remote sensing monitoring techniques as a conservation method, and I'm getting too caught up in the bigger picture. 

In a recent study by Moran and Kanemoto, researchers identified ‘hotspots’ of threat to biodiversity, stemming from consumption in the United States. The resulting images created show a great impact on species in North America and Eurasia, caused by the production of goods for exportation.  And this is only one of the major developed economies.

Moran and Kanemoto (2017) - Darker areas show higher threat from US consumption

A recent analysis of IUCN Red List data (which for many conservationists sets out the state of threat to different species) carried out by Maxwell et al reveals that in the present day, climate change is not yet the major threat to biodiversity that it is made out to be. In fact, their analysis showed that climate change only directly threatens 1,688  out of over 82,000 species studied, falling behind system modification, pollution, invasion and disease, urban development and lastly, agricultural activity (with livestock farming as the second most threatening individual activity, as per last week’s post). At this rate, it doesn’t look like many species will survive long enough to see the effects of climate change.

However, it is important to consider that this is based on a causation logic of 4 factors (storms and flooding, habitat modification, extreme temperatures and drought) and does not take into account the many potential indirect effects that climate change could have. There are other obvious limitations to looking at what ‘threatens’ a species – such things rarely operate in isolation and as I’ve realised in many of my blog posts biodiversity data is very complex and difficult to determine accurately.

So it’s not fair to say that climate change is not a big risk to biodiversity, but as Maxwell et al warn in their paper, it is crucial that action on climate change doesn’t overshadow action to reduce current threats to biodiversity. And it’s been further stated that whilst protecting biodiversity and work to diminish climate change are issues that affect each other, they are ultimately separate.

A comment by Caro and Mulder that I found interesting is “effective efforts to protect trees and reduce climate change may result in conserving only an empty forest”.  I was told in my A-level geography class that the word ‘holistic’ was key in all areas of geography, and indeed I think I put it in every essay I wrote. But I’m reminded again of the importance of a holistic strategy here. For effective management of biodiversity loss, climate action needs to be an involved part of conservation and conservation needs to include a consideration of climate change phenomena. If we’re tackling the big picture, we can’t forget about the individual components that need action.