Are We All on the EDGE? James Rosindell Explains Biodiversity Risk

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to Mind the Globe, the podcast where we dive into some of today's most pressing global challenges.

We are a team of seven international students from the Junior Research Lab at Institut Agro Montpellier, here to explore the issues that shape our world and our future.

Hello and welcome to Mind the Globe, Junior Research Talk.

My name is Neve and today I'm here with Dr James Rosindell to talk about the global biodiversity crisis.

Globally, wildlife population declines are being observed and without effective conservation action, the level of biodiversity will continue to decline, having both ecological and economic repercussions.

James, thank you very much for joining us to discuss this topic.

Before we dive deeper into the world of biodiversity and conservation, maybe you can give a brief introduction of yourself and your background in research.

Thanks very much for inviting me onto the podcast.

I studied, first of all, actually as a mathematician, which you might not have expected.

But I did that because I was interested in the subject and I was interested in broadly getting technical skills that I wasn't sure where I was going with yet.

I always had a strong interest in ecology and in conservation.

I thought it might have been my hobby or my pet interest.

But once I learned that it was not only possible, but really encouraged to apply those mathematical and computational skills in ecology, I moved over into that subject area and that's where I've been since for my classic academic career.

And are you working on anything currently within this field of biodiversity and conservation?

Yes, a broad range of things.

As always happens when you've been in a career for a while, you end up with a range of projects going on.

For me, a big part of my work is about the question of how to measure biodiversity, how to conserve biodiversity.

And the other branch is about how to model biodiversity, how to have computer simulations that can predict what may happen in the future and which you can use as tools for conservation and for understanding.

And within this work, is there any project in particular that really makes you proud to have been a part of?

Yeah, there is.

So I am most proud of the One Zoom Tree of Life Explorer.

What that is, is a website, a little bit like a geological map, but instead of exploring the geography of the whole globe, you're exploring the tree of life.

That's over two million described species.

And it's like a geographical map because of the user interface.

You zoom into an area of interest and it expands and more details naturally appear, just like you might zoom into a country and then a city in a geographical map.

Here you might zoom into animals and then you might zoom into a particular group like molluscs, and then you might zoom within those into a subgroup.

And that's how it would work.

But because of the way that it is constructed, it uses a mathematical technique known as fractals.

So this creates something that's quite beautiful, quite pretty to look at, as well as having this zooming capability.

So secondly, that technique enables us to get around the technical problems of how to create something that's explorable and fun for two million species, because you can't wait for all of that to load into your computer before you start exploring.

There needs to be things going on behind the scenes in order to make that feel like a smooth experience.

One more thing I'll say about it, because I know that we're going to come on to talk about conservation as well, is that as you explore this one-dimension tree of life explorer online, the colours of the leaves indicate what we know about their risk of extinction.

So critically endangered species appear in a much bolder red colour.

And then other species that are under threat of extinction, but not critically endangered, they appear in a less severe red colour.

And then we've got the ones we're not worried about.

And the vast majority, which are the ones that we actually don't know whether they are endangered or not, and we need to find out more.

And there's quite a large proportion of species that are data deficient or non-evaluated.

Why is it so important for us to still consider these species within our conservation goals?

If we're going to succeed with conservation, then we need to have a measurement of success.

And as I discussed earlier, a key part of that measurement of success is going to be about preventing extinction and preventing species from getting near to extinction.

But how can we do that if most species, we have no idea how far or close to extinction they are at all?

It's like trying to play a game to win, but you can only see a tiny percentage of the board.

So you've got no idea what your score is.

You won't be able to play that game very effectively.

And so whilst doing the good action of conservation is important, if you can't see, then you won't necessarily be doing the right thing.

And that's why I think it's important to fill in as many as possible of the gaps in the IUCN red lists.

As you've mentioned, you've done a lot of work in measuring biodiversity for conservation, and there's such a wide variety of metrics out there to use to measure biodiversity.

What do you think is the most important or the most effective metric that we should prioritise in conservation planning?

I wouldn't advise us to focus on just one metric.

I think if we do that, we risk dangerous things happening.

As soon as you've got one metric involved, you'll end up in a scenario where to try to maximise that, you end up doing silly things somewhere else.

That being said, having too many measurements makes things very complicated.

And when things are complicated, they're hard for policy makers to understand and get on board with.

And they're hard for the public to understand and get on board with.

So we shouldn't have too many.

Of course, we need to have some ongoing research in the topic.

So what do I recommend then?

Well, I think there's definitely a lot of importance in species and extinction.

And although there are problems and flaws in the concept of species at all, I still think that for our measurement of biodiversity and conservation, there should be something that is about species and extinction.

They should probably be forward looking.

So that's taking into account not just how many extinctions have occurred so far, but how many extinctions are likely to occur over the next 20, 30, 50 years.

Because things can be sliding down and going into a pretty obviously bad place.

And yet if you only count the ones that have already gone extinct, which is generally speaking irreversible, then that's already too late.

So I think something forward looking and about extinction would definitely be one key metric I would choose.

There is a nice one here called the Red List Index.

And we're going to talk about the Red List, I expect.

But the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the official place where you can find out whether a species is threatened with extinction or not.

And to what extent it's threatened.

So it might be vulnerable or endangered or critically endangered or it might be already extinct.

And there are official definitions of how those things are measured and categorised.

Yes, the IUCN Red List integrates a broad range of ecological data, including conservation measures, spatial distribution and population abundance, all of which contributes to determining the extinction risk level of the species and which has allowed the Red List to become a cornerstone for global conservation action.

And so the Red List Index looks at how those categorisations are changing over time.

Using this metric, we can observe the proportion of species that have been downlisted, indicating an improvement in their extinction risk, for example, going from critically endangered to endangered.

And this is in comparison to those that have been uplisted to a higher risk category, such as going from vulnerable to endangered.

This index also notably incorporates a metric of genuineness, ensuring that only shifts in extinction risk due to significant ecological factors are considered.

And that critically will penalise us if species get close to extinction, even if they're hanging on by a thread.

Beyond that, though, I think we need to look at measures of biodiversity that go beyond species.

And one area that I particularly have worked on a lot in my career is the idea of phylogenetic diversity, which links back to the tree of life that I already mentioned earlier.

Now, phylogenetic diversity is like looking at all of the branches of the tree of life and adding them up.

So if you've got a species that is very distantly related to all of its relatives, then you might consider that has particularly high value, because there's a lot of time in which that's been evolving and presumably evolving novel traits, novel properties that don't exist elsewhere.

Whereas if you look at a species that has a very close relative, then they're likely to be very similar in terms of their properties, in terms of their functions.

There are exceptions to this, of course, as there are to anything.

But it's a good way of capturing the sum total of evolutionary history.

And so I think that this is another key aspect of biodiversity.

So phylogenetic diversity-based metrics allow us to consider a measure of functional and genetic diversity with regards to a species' unique evolutionary story.

There is this concept called mutual options for humanity.

So the idea is that out there in biodiversity, in nature, there are all kinds of not only undiscovered species, but even within the species that are technically discovered, there's all kinds of genes, all kinds of functions, all kinds of chemical properties, things which might be hugely useful to us in ways that we can't comprehend.

And by losing those such that we have lost forever the chance to study or find out about them, we might be throwing away the most amazing future that we could have.

And so based on that concept, we could be retaining particularly those species that have more unique evolutionary history behind them and therefore a greater chance that they have some of these undiscovered future options.

And this area of conservation includes metrics like the EDGE2 metric, which we will come on to discuss later, which shows how the evolutionary history of a species can be used to conserve for the future.

The third aspect that I think is important is the spatial one.

So I've mentioned about future options, but for that, it's fine if that special species exists somewhere in the world such that it could still be studied.

It doesn't have to be next door.

It could be anywhere.

Whereas for human interactions with biodiversity, we want there to be biodiversity around people.

We want there to be biodiversity across the globe and we want that to be complete.

So we want to have complete ecosystems and we want them to be everywhere.

It's no consolation to you, listener, wherever you happen to be in the world, if biodiversity is conserved everywhere else, but you're living in a concrete jungle around no biodiversity.

And so the spatial aspect of biodiversity and particularly how that interacts with the functions that biodiversity provide to us is the third pillar, in my opinion, of what we should be looking at.

Precisely how we measure all these three things, of course, we can debate about and there'll be lots of different ways.

But for me, these are the pillars, the species, the future options as measured by the tree of life and evolutionary history in some way, and the spatial aspects, including the functions and the way that they feed through directly to supporting ourselves.

And there are also the metrics out there that combine some of these aspects, such as the EDGE2 metric that I briefly mentioned before.

EDGE2 combines a species' evolutionary distinctiveness with its level of global endangerment.

The result is an EDGE2 priority list that suggests species should be prioritised for conservation based on their threatened extinction risk and the phylogenetic diversity we risk losing.

You worked on the development of the EDGE2 metric.

When you were approaching this project of advancing the original EDGE metric and developing it into EDGE2, were there any particular aspects that were a clear priority for you?

When EDGE was originally published, it was a very new and exciting thing.

And off the back of that, many, many other researchers around the globe followed that up with embellishments, with further thinking about the concept, as you'd expect from any new development.

And yet the original EDGE remained the one in regular use.

And at some point, practical conservation should look back at the research and say, what could we learn from the research that's been done over all of these years to update our practises?

And that's what happened with EDGE2.

We actually held a workshop and we had experts ranging the full gamut of subjects, all the way from maths, all the way through to practical conservationists, to think about what were the developments in this field?

How should we improve the status quo?

And in a way that is still practical, that can still be used.

In terms of the advances with EDGE2, they are mostly about these matters of practicality.

For example, how to get around all of these species where we don't know how endangered they are.

And yet their level of endangerment impacts the importance of the others.

For example, let's say you've got two closely related species, but then they've got no other close relatives.

So they're very, very unique together as a pair.

And one of them is critically endangered.

But the other one is unknown.

That's quite a high risk scenario, because if you lose both of those, then you lose what that pair have together that's very unique.

But one of them is unknown.

So how do you deal with that?

And under the old framework, there would not have been a way to comfortably deal with that situation.

And now there is.

So EDGE2 was developed to incorporate the idea of phylogenetic complementarity and the link between the phylogenetic diversity of species on the same branch.

And this is just one example of a metric that takes multiple approaches to conservation.

One of the main reasons for this multifaceted approach is to reflect how biodiversity impacts multiple aspects of life on Earth, particularly through its role in ecosystem services.

Conserving high biodiversity levels allows us to maintain healthy ecosystems, which in turn support more functions and services.

These ecosystem services, defined as the benefits humans derive from ecological processes, play a pivotal role in maintaining and enhancing human quality of life.

They are broadly categorised into the regulation of ecological processes, the cultural and recreational benefits, support for ecological processes and the production of human valued goods.

Now, we've already discussed a little the ecological repercussions of biodiversity loss, but could you elaborate a little for our listeners on the social and economic consequences that are often left unconsidered?

Well, there's a lot of social and economic consequences of biodiversity loss.

From the ecosystem services perspective, there's the fact that people rely on the ecosystem for foods to support agriculture or even directly through sustainable harvesting, like fisheries, if they're done sustainably.

And then you've got the cultural elements where particular species or environments are of key significance for people's cultures or traditions.

And then you've got the mental health benefits of going outside and being in a green natural environment, waking up to the sounds of birds calling, for instance, and to see green.

You've got the service of purifying water, purifying air.

You've got the ecosystem service of breaking down wastes that exist, producing fertile soil, pollinating our crops, of controlling the pests that might exist in the crops.

And all the way through more topically to things like zoonotic diseases, which are made worse by pressing biodiversity into contact with human intense areas in a way that it might not have naturally done.

So there's many, many facets there which span both to the financial and the more nuanced side.

But I, for one, would add to that a caution that we shouldn't make conservation be all about human well-being.

Let's say, for instance, that someone shows tomorrow and I don't believe this is the case, but let's say that someone shows tomorrow that we can let most of biodiversity go and we'll still retain all the key ecosystem services.

People will still have a bit of green.

They'll still have some nice sounds around them.

They'll still be able to feed and the air will be acceptable.

And yet we can lose most of biodiversity.

Would I be sitting here giving my opinion on this podcast and saying, well, we've solved it now.

We didn't worry about all this extinction anymore.

I wouldn't be.

I would be saying this is a tragic loss.

And I would still be talking about things like future options and all of these elements of biodiversity that we're at risk of losing.

And so I think that it's very dangerous to make it entirely about human well-being.

And although human well-being is a key factor, we also need to focus our attention on conservation on the idea of retaining it for its own sake.

And I think maybe a good analogy to use there is to actually look at the value that we place on elements of our own cultural history.

So, for example, take an art gallery.

You couldn't argue.

Well, you can argue that it benefits people's well-being to go and look at art and to go to an art gallery.

And I would argue that.

But it's a little bit vague.

It doesn't help to feed people.

It doesn't help to put a roof over their heads at night.

So it is a harder sell.

But yet people don't think that we should just destroy the artwork and not bother about it.

You know, because we recognise that that is an important and beautiful thing that has value.

And the value that it has is pretty hard to quantify, pretty hard to put a value on in terms of money, which is what we typically use to value things across the value of things.

And biodiversity is exactly like that.

It's beautiful.

It's all around us.

Once it's gone, it's like burning down the art gallery and losing all the paintings and we'll never get it back.

So we should keep it just for that.

I love that analogy.

It really highlights the worth of biodiversity as something beautiful and unique.

As you pointed out, though, biodiversity is often considered in the context of human development, particularly through frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to improve human well-being and quality of life.

Among the 17 SDGs, two directly address the biodiversity crisis.

SDG 14, life below water, and SDG 15, life on land.

Additionally, many other SDGs are also closely linked to the other biodiversity conservation goals, such as SDG 2 for zero hunger and 6 for water quality.

Even SDGs that may seem less directly related, such as SDG 4 for quality education, SDG 5 for gender equality and SDG 10 for reduced inequalities, have indirect associations with biodiversity conservation through their roles in fostering inclusive, informed and equitable solutions.

Given this interconnectedness in considering both biodiversity-specific frameworks and the broader SDG agenda, how do you think these international boundaries could be improved to more effectively address the global issue of biodiversity loss?

One factor about the Sustainable Development Goals is that they're very people-focused.

As you pointed out yourself, there are some which are biodiversity-focused, but they're mostly people-focused.

And I think that actually that is important because whether or not we're saving biodiversity for human benefit alone, what is clear is that we can't save biodiversity while people around it are in distress.

Because there's nothing worse than being starving or desperate for going and doing wildlife crime or poaching or destroying land to grow crops.

And so looking after people across the globe is an absolute pillar of biodiversity conservation that is now well recognised.

We cannot save biodiversity while making an enemy of people.

We need to save biodiversity and at the same time help the people around it such that they can benefit from it without destroying it and such that they can have a reasonable existence without destroying it.

And so I'm not necessarily worried that the sustainability goals that are people-focused aren't directly addressing biodiversity.

I'm pleased there are biodiversity-focused goals because I know that we have to make life better for people in order to save biodiversity.

These biodiversity-focused goals have also been refined and developed through time to place emphasis on areas where past conservation has failed.

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets, introduced in 2010, marked a significant effort to address this challenge, building on the concept of the planetary boundaries.

These targets aim to tackle the root causes of biodiversity loss through measures such as establishing protected areas, controlling invasive species, and promoting sustainable population management.

With a 2020 deadline, the post-evaluation revealed that only six of the 20 targets were partially achieved and none were fully realised.

In response, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was launched in 2022, setting new goals to conserve biodiversity and achieve a sustainable balance by 2050.

Its four long-term objectives emphasise restoring ecosystem resilience, supporting ecosystem services, and fostering equitable global resource sharing to advance conservation efforts worldwide.

One critical lesson from the evaluation of the Aichi Targets is the pressing need for public education on biodiversity conservation.

This is reflected in the new framework's emphasis on raising awareness.

So how do you think we can effectively communicate the importance of biodiversity to the general public and work towards achieving this essential goal?

Well, I think podcasts are definitely a good way of doing it.

I think that engaging ambassadors around the globe is important.

And actually, with the Edge of Existence programme at the Zoological Society of London, which funds people to work on these edge species that we've discussed earlier in the podcast,

when you talk to the people that they give funding to around the globe for conservation work on particular species,

it's very often the case that part of their work is about education of the local community, where they might see that species,

they might see it as a pest or they might not recognise how important it is on a global scale or what its true value is.

And so education through ambassadors that have knowledge about conservation, I think, is very important.

And those have got to be global scale.

And finally, if you'll just allow me to plug my own project, the Tree of Life Explorer.

That's exactly what I wanted to do with it.

I wanted there to be a place where people can go that's just accessible and online to see the scale of biodiversity and the scale of threat, as well as how beautiful and marvellous all that biodiversity is.

So we've got a tapestry of many, many different things going on.

And I think we just need more like that.

And conservation should reflect and emphasise the beauty and the value of biodiversity across all aspects of life, both human and ecological.

This is an area of science that develops and refines itself as we learn to grow and appreciate new aspects of biodiversity that should be saved.

And as such, conservation metrics grow to prioritise these new areas of importance.

James, what would you like our listeners to take away from our discussion here today?

I want people to know what biodiversity is, which is that biodiversity is the variety and the variability of life on Earth.

That is a much more nuanced and much bigger thing than just counting up species.

And I want people to know that that biodiversity is absolutely remarkable and worth saving wherever it is.

It certainly is.

James, thank you very much for joining us here today on Mind the Globe.

It's a pleasure.

Thanks very much for inviting me.

And thank you, everyone, for listening.