The human factor looms large as world experts gather to discuss the future for biodiversity

30.06.2011 - SSWF Oxford, UK

Our Executive Director Sue Riddlestone blogs from the Smith School World Forum on Valuing Ecosystem Services: From New Commitments to Strategic Action. The world-class Forum continues today and videos and presentation slides from all the seminars and lectures can be accessed online.


I came to the Smith School World Forum thinking I was going to have a change of scene by hearing Oxford boffins talking about biodiversity and learning about valuing ecosystems services from Pavan Sukhdev himself, the man who led the famous TEEB study.   Although my expectations on that score were met yesterday, it was really amusing when it came full circle back to the type of work I do every day.  As our three hour workshop on research ideas for biodiversity futures drew to a close, one of the key outcomes was that we need to inspire people with real examples of what our sustainable future looks like. Which is what we do at BioRegional and I promise it wasn’t me who suggested it!  It came out of an interesting discussion on the need for sustainable living to reduce pressure on biodiversity - which come to think of it, was the reason we set up BioRegional. Sir David King and other speakers had all pointed out that human behaviour is a critical factor which needs to be taken into account and merits study.  Joseph D’Cruz from UNDP noted that people in Asia can’t wait to get away from the bugs and nature, the driver for them is aspiration. Those of us gathered in Oxford are nature lovers and not a representative bunch!

Another theme at the Forum is the need to have some simple and easy to understand metrics and targets on biodiversity which could be mainstreamed in society in much the same way as Climate Change metrics. For example, anyone who has the slightest responsibility for sustainability knows that we are trying to stay below a 2 degrees temperature rise and are aiming for an 80-90% reduction in CO2 emissions in Europe by 2050. One aspect of this which I asked both the panel and the inspiring ecologist Professor David MacDonald over a cup of tea was.. In the context of humans living within a fair share of our ecological footprint how much space do we humans need to allow for a sustainable level of biodiversity?  Ten per cent is suggested by Global Footprint Network and is the figure we use in our work, but E.O. Wilson and the originator of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock have suggested we need to leave fifty per cent of the land to “go wild” mainly in Lovelock’s case to let our planet heal itself.

But in the conversations at the World Forum one other factor keeps coming up – human population. There are 6.7 billion people on our planet today, up from 1 billion in 1800 and 3 billion in 1960, the year I was born.  All those people need something to eat, somewhere to live, construction materials and energy for their homes and for the better off, luxury goods like smart phones containing rare earth minerals mined in some far away country. Of course richer people have a disproportionately bigger impact than poorer people, ranging from national averages of six planet living in Qatar to third of a planet living in Bangladesh.  This is the real reason we are in trouble and biodiversity is in trouble is because of us. It seems that the sooner we face up to this as a global society and take concerted action the better.  Maybe this could be a research topic to come out of this World Forum.