Hello, everyone, and welcome to the six in the series of talks, virtual talks that are run by the Oxford Martin School,
which are called Building Back Better Lessons and Opportunities from Konbit 19 from the Cove at 19, Pandemic Camp Preparing for the Future.
I should tell you that this talk is recorded and that we are very much hope that you will ask questions.
To do that, you have to be on Chromecast.
And if you are on Chromecast, down on the bottom right hand corner of your screen, you'll see a button saying ask a question.
And so please do ask a question. And there is also the facility to vote on which questions that you want me to ask.
And my name is Charles Godfrey. I am the director of the Oxford Martin School, the Oxford Martin School as part of the university.
We're a group that has been very generously funded by the Martin family.
And our brief is to do work addressing major challenges of the 21st century.
Well, that is nearly always interdisciplinary and cuts across different fields.
I'm really delighted this afternoon to have joining me a colleague and an old friend, E.J., Mel McGovern, Eleanor gentlemanlike, Alan.
But everyone calls E.J. E.J. is the Tassimo events professor of biology here at the University of Oxford.
E.J. was actually an undergraduate here and then went to Imperial College,
where she did a he HDTV with John Beddington and then moved to Warwick West,
which was her first academic appointment, then to Imperial College, and then came back to Oxford about six years ago.
And E.J., does extraordinary work are on the edge of biology, economics, social science, but all around conservation, biology.
E.J. I was going to ask you to say a little bit about the work on your life.
Much better for you to describe your work than for me to what's going on in your life.
A moment. Well, thanks for having me, Charles. I've been looking forward to this talk for a while.
So I guess the link with the Oxford Martin School is that we have to be present on the illegal wildlife trade and
on the behaviour of consumers and how you can kind of change the supply chains that becomes more sustainable.
But and that's kind of one aspect of the work that we do, which is broadly around how people relate to nature.
A lot of what we do is about individual resource users, often in developing countries who are relating to wildlife in various ways.
But we also try to help conservation organisations design implements and monitor their programmes better.
And recently we've been starting to have a little bit more with government and with businesses about.
Thanks so much. Now we're going to be talking about lessons for the pandemic, for conservation,
biology and the relationships between humanity and biodiversity and wildlife.
Just before we went. But before we do that, we both wanted to mark a very sad event on Dame Georgina Mace.
Georgina Mace died at the weekend. Georgina Mace, many of you will know of her.
She is one of the most esteemed and best regarded conservation biologists in the world.
She's had an enormous influence on the subject and on ecology and and population biology.
She's known for many things, for example. She was instrumental in developing the IUCN Red List criteria, which are just now used throughout the world.
She was closely involved in the UK's Millennial Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
She sits at the moment or has sat at the moment on the Climate Change Committee, Adaptation Committee and beyond her work in conservation biology.
She was just a wonderful ambassador for the subject. She is an ambassador for women and science.
She's ambassador for young people. E.J., you knew Georgina very well.
You've published many papers with her. Tell me a bit about how you will remember her.
Well, I think, you know, when you look at the towering achievements in the awards and the papers and all the amazing work that she's done,
actually for many of us and when I've been monitoring the kind of social media about her.
What many, many people say is she changed my career.
She touched my life. I only met her twice, but she was so kind. She was so thoughtful.
And she really gave a stare into how how to move forward.
And I completely see that. And I think she she gave a really good example of how you can be a leader and how you can be someone who's very sharp,
who always, you know, cut straight to the point in a very incisive way.
But he's also kind, and I felt really honoured that very early in my career.
Georgina did that for me. She showed me how to how to be a leader.
And she she was always there as a mentor for me and for thousands of other people under the hashtag.
It struck me exactly the same thing just in the email traffic.
The social media traffic in the last couple of days, it's always Siteman, a figure as eminent as her dies.
But the real love and affection for Georgina that has been so palpable.
She will be much miss. E.J.,
you've taught for a long time now about the possibility of diseases jumping
from wildlife into humans and the importance of understanding and then what,
Ian wildlife, the importance of understanding the habitats from which they have come.
Should we have been surprised?
Should we have been better prepared for a corona virus to jump probably from bats, perhaps through something else into humans?
Should it have taken us off unaware, as it seems to us? That's a leading question, isn't it?
Because we should have known. And it's not like we haven't had previous instances of this.
So even with great viruses, so there's cells, but there's also murres and other respiratory system,
another another corona virus which went and say, so is this if it's properly and then there's an feedbacks to camels, to humans, probably.
But it's not just these corona viruses.
We've had a number of of pandemics that have come through that haven't haven't reached the stages covered that have given the world a shock.
There's been a number of flus, this Ebola virus, things NEPA.
And so it's not that we weren't warned, but I guess previously they've been contained, containable, and therefore we haven't really acted.
We haven't really taken the lessons on board. And let's hope we will this time.
If you look at many countries in Southeast Asia then and you look at what's on the statute books, then it appears really quite impressive.
There's a lot of laws out there which protects humans from diseases that might jump across.
It is the issue that that it's the implementation of the laws, or do we need better laws to to stop this,
stop the emergence of these diseases and then transfer to humans? Definitely has an Ephraim's plantation.
And as you say, most countries around the world have quite relatively strong wildlife protection rules.
And I think, you know, as a result of Kovik, there's going to be more stringent legislation and maybe more stringent enforcement as well.
But the problem is that sometimes that stringent legislation can be, you know, hammered coconut or it can be misaligned and have loopholes.
And so, for example, some of the legislation that's been put in in China in response to Cove, it has targeted captive wild animals,
which perhaps a less of an issue with public health and perhaps less an issue of conservation as well.
But then has left loopholes with respect to things like any aquatic species, which includes things like turtles, which are very widely sold and.
So, you know, these kinds of issues mean that. Just enforcing laws is great.
It has to be done first and says that setting in place laws that have these kinds of unintended consequences is not going to help.
So one of the issues seems to been with the current outbreak.
The issue of wet markets and of course, wet markets have a cultural significance in many countries in Southeast Asia.
Well, throughout throughout the world. As someone who thinks as much about the social science as the sort of biology of it.
Are you optimistic that it might be possible to kerb infections coming across through consumption of bushmeat,
consumption of wildlife sold through wet markets? Yeah.
Well, I think, first of all, we have to be careful not to generalise, because, as you say,
there are markets all over the world and a wet market really is just a name for food market, the fresh produce market.
And some of them have wildlife and some of them don't. And.
I think when we're thinking about markets, we need to think about the fact that we've got three,
maybe four priorities that we need to think that we need to optimise against.
It's always difficult to optimise against four different things at once.
And so we're trying to optimise for public health, also for conservation, also for animal welfare and also for food security.
And when we think that that kind of way terms, then you can start to think that.
Okay, so say for public health, a specific species that are more likely to potentially transmit viruses.
There's also an intersection between public health and animal welfare because animals that are more stressed
are more likely to shed virus animals that are crowded together from different parts of the world.
Different species are more likely to allow the jumping the species barrier.
But then it becomes more complicated when we think about conservation and food security, because, for example, you know,
maybe up to a billion people are dependent on bushmeat, either for for their income, for their subsistence and bushmeat, trade, local trade.
And so just shutting the bushmeat markets is really not necessarily going to be the way forward against any of those four priorities.
So ideally, what would you do then?
With Bush Markinson Bush meeting things? Is the idea to facilitate a safer alternative form of proteins?
And I'm thinking in particular about some of the interesting initiatives in West Africa to move to use some quite novel ideas, for example,
using insects to produce that then can be fed to chickens and things to provide a
safer and more secure means of protein for for people who really are protein starved.
Yeah, and I guess as a couple things to think about with that. The first thing is that.
There are laws to be enforced that need to be enforced for protected species. So we shouldn't be trading in highly protected species.
But for the commonest species, may be glass cutters.
Some of the Dicus bushmeat trade is not necessarily one of the major risks, maybe habitat nonsense.
It's even more of a risk. And we can't go against people's lived experience and we can't introduce things that people don't want to see.
You could just imagine the same. What what reaction we would have in this country if someone came in and said, oh, well, you know,
you can't you can't sell beef anymore and you've got to eat insects instead and for no obvious reason and say, oh, well, it's to do with disease risk.
And if there's no evidence in your daily life that that's true. So you have to kind of work with people and understand what people actually are
prepared to accept and what with people about what their own preferences are.
So, for example, fish is often quite preferred in many parts of the world.
And, you know, moving towards a sustainable fishery would help.
But there's a nice example from Guinea from the 2013 to 16 Ebola outbreak, which is kind of instructive, which is that one of the main outbreak areas.
It's quite close to protected area. And it is true that probably Ebola came through butchery of a primate or something that someone had hunted.
But by the time the Ebola was actually at kind of academic levels, transmission was human to human.
It was bushmeat wasn't anything to do with it. People put up public health messaging that was very strongly about do not eat bushmeat.
And the local people thought, well, a, you know. We've been eating bushmeat for a long time, and it hasn't caused a problem.
We don't trust this public health messaging now because we think there's a hidden agenda here.
It's about trying to stop, is going to put serious bushmeat. And I think that probably was.
And so actually,
the entire public health messaging failed because people just dismissed it as these are external people coming in with hidden agendas.
And it actually backfired in terms of getting people to do the safe things that needed to be done for Ebola.
So I think that's a nice example of where not considering those social elements just lead you into worse situations.
Can you give an example from from your work either in Africa or in Asia?
A good example of where there has been a beneficial intervention that is best reduce the effect of of,
for example, bushmeat hunting and reduce the probability of a disease jumping the species barrier.
Yeah, I mean, yes and no, not focussed on disease per tick,
but we've got a project with IED and and some Cameroonian in country NGO partners, which is called Why Eat Wild Meat?
And the reason why it's called that is that alternate alternative livelihood projects,
alternative protein source projects are endlessly being implemented across sub-Saharan Africa.
And often they fail. And that often is because the real reasons why people are not eating different protein sources are not investigated.
The alternatives are not co designed with local people and the actual constraints and not address.
So, for example, researchers have found that the reasons why people aren't actually able to make a living from the
sustainable aquaculture that has been introduced around the javas is because when they go into town,
they get. They have to pay a tax to the eco guards.
They can't get permits to sell their fish, which they had before, to sell their bushmeat.
And therefore, you know, because of all the kind of it went katcher by and two tenements or the kind of costs of actually doing business,
it ends up that it costs them more to sell the fish than than they would need for it.
So that's an example way. Unless you took a look at people don't get that kind of insight.
So that's I because there's always been a paradox that aquaculture has been so successful in southern Asia has proven so hard to take off in Africa.
And from what you're saying, that sounds like it could very well be that the low local social and economic contexts,
it's just not milked that properly. And you mentioned the IED and many people know what that is.
But and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems nothing is Duop environment and development really fascinate yet.
NGO based in in London. We started by remembering the wonderful Georgina Mace.
And one of the things that Georgina has been instrumental for has been talking about and with many other people about the importance of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is a form of natural capital.
Quite how much that we as humanity gain from the natural world, which is just not accounted for in the way we normally think of.
Think about what are our assets. So the natural capital lesson overlooked asset.
And so we talk so much about ecosystem services and classic examples is that crops that are pollinated by wild bees and things.
I wonder if one of the things that may come out of thinking about the pandemic is actually thinking about ecosystem disservices.
So if one and I speak as someone who spent three months of my youth catching bats in Africa and I, I love bats.
And I worry that if people realise that bats, for complicated reasons that we could happily chat about,
are a reservoir for so many viruses which can potentially hop over into humans.
That then bats may be seen as a bad part of nature and we will go about destroying them.
And a primary that doesn't seem a silly thing to do.
So do you worry about that?
One legacy of the pandemic is that we will view parts of the natural world as potentially very harmful and that this will cause conservation.
Conservation, biology issues. Yeah, and we've seen it before, actually, so.
And I work a lot in southern Russia. And during the last bird flu pandemic,
there was a call out to cull all migratory water birds as they were flying around the
Caspian Sea in southern Russia from government and from local hunting organisations.
So that's yeah, that's not helpful.
Also in Saar's, there was a kind of general let's go and kill all the civets view.
So I don't think it's at all unlikely that people will go out and look at fruit bats, that it's roosts and try and destroy them.
I think what we have to do is view nature in the round. So nature has its own thing.
It's not there to provide services or disservices to us.
It does have it does make contributions to people in those contributions of varied and complex kinds,
say, for example, with bats, fruit bats, in particular, major pollinators of many important crops.
And so, you know, you want to have bats around. Your area, but what you don't want to do is to try to encroach on their habitats.
The extent to which you're disturbing roosts and you're getting too close to them.
So, for example, neep about the virus is quite good evidence that in Malaysia they it is transmitted through pigs to humans starting from bats.
And that was because of recent encroachment in the forest areas, which then disturbed the bats,
which then made degraded habitat that that's new to close to the pigs. The pigs then.
And so I think we need to re-evaluate our own relationship to nature and try to think about ways that we can live more.
It sounds a bit trite, but, you know, liveable harmoniously with nature.
And some of that is about not continually encroaching on the first frontier, thereby exposing ourselves to these issues.
Surprise, you know that there has been a debate which can sometimes get acrimonious and the
conservation biology community about people who argue that we should view nature,
that that the reason to preserve nature is that we have a duty of stewardship for the natural world and others who.
And caricaturing two ends of the spectrum and others who take a purely instrumental approach that we should take an economic valuation.
And again, go back to Georgina. Georgina was one of the people sort of poor put oil on this troubled water.
Do you think that that that post pandemic that will affect that debate,
that that if I might interpret what you've said, is sort of looking more holistically about nature,
that it is acknowledging the good that it does, but also taking account of a stewardship function that that we we,
in a sense, have a duty to preserve biodiversity for future generations.
Do you think the pandemic will alter the dynamics of that of that discussion?
Well, I sort of hopes I think where we are with a pandemic is a hideous and horrible situation,
which is also providing a massive shock to our economic and social system.
And that massive shock is perhaps coming at a time, which is when we're in the last chance saloon.
So we have an opportunity to actually move towards some of the sustainable scenarios that have been put forward by scientists,
including by Georgina in a paper that was published just 10 days before she died.
That show that if we have conservation, if we if we do change our society, our societal approach,
then we can actually move to a situation where we live sustainably with nature.
So, you know, it's kind of a.
We're in a situation where climate change affects the effects of biodiversity loss are becoming just monstrously apparent around the world.
And and we have this pandemic that will. Necessarily need lead to the evaluation of our economies.
But I think it's going to vary very much where we are.
So in the countries of Western Europe, you know, what we need to think about is our own supply chains, our own footprint overseas,
and the huge damage we do without even realising that that's what we're doing in our general consumption.
In other places like in sub-Saharan Africa, you know,
there's going to be shocks that are much more kind of coming through the macroeconomic system and through their global trade networks.
Some. So moving on to some of the indirect effects of the pandemic.
And, of course, there are many fabulous conservation initiatives throughout the world,
particularly of sub-Saharan Africa, where the viability of conservation projects absolutely depends on ecotourism.
And the one thing that just hasn't happened this year is much tourism.
And it's going to take several years for tourism to to recover from discussions that I'm sure you have with other conservation biologists.
How worried are people really about short term effects on endangered species in at the moment as ecotourism has been so curtailed?
Yeah, worried. So it's the general phrase of honest conservation.
And the fact that, like I said, there's there's incentives for.
Negative interactions, the nature. So the fact that as people look away, it's possible for illegal logging to continue and even for and accelerate.
And even for governments to actually tacitly or not endorse land grabs, endorse or at least not stop endangered species exploitation.
And so we're in a dangerous situation where the environmental laws are not being enforced or or actually
being weakened at a time where the flows of money through conservation are pretty much drying up.
And that just speaks to the need to have a more sustainable economy in these places.
So we need to have an economy which is diversified, just like the rural countryside in the UK.
You know, you need a diversified economy in which people aren't aligned with just one source of income in which people can
meet the aspirations that they have for know perhaps a more connected world where they can get an education,
where they can actually fulfil their potential in those rural areas.
And actually, people in the best situations around national parks is not about emptying the place of people.
It's about enabling people to live decent lives and actually act as a buffer to external encroachment often.
And so supporting indigenous peoples rights, land rights, land tenure, rights, enabling mobile connexion,
enabling kind of basic utilities can actually be a good thing for conservation.
It's the most extraordinary thing that I've noticed in sort of visiting Africa for
30 years is how Africa has leapfrogged in some technology and goes mobile phones.
It's the it's most characteristic. And for a long period,
I could get a better mobile phone signal in my field site in rural Kenya than I could where I live 20 miles south of of of Oxford.
Are you optimistic about rural development in in Africa, doing exactly what you're saying,
trying to bring people out out of poverty suddenly since May,
extremely patchy that in some areas one is seen as a rapid sort of increase in local incomes and in other areas,
even though there are mobile phones everywhere and even those and in no other good things are happening,
then it just seems impossible for the vast majority of people to move out of poverty.
Yeah. In a. You stray away from conservation then into the whole thing about the political economy
and power and the reluctance of governments to decentralise when what we really need,
I think, in these places to see says is kind of decentralisation so that you can have mobile networks,
you can have locally, locally sourced power, those kinds of things.
And actually, you know, I think we're starting to realise both within conservation and within development
and in the kind of rights based approach to to human development that
there's so much common ground between conservation and some of the more kind of people orientated areas that we're thinking about the same thing.
So if you want to have a sustainable relationship with the planet,
you do actually have to have people who have a decent standard of living, who have rights and who are able to make a living.
And I think, you know. We don't need to continually convert natural areas anymore.
We can intensify in a way that's sustainable. We can use precision agriculture and we can do that in a way that's fair.
And again, it's just about the power, the willpower to to invest.
So both of you, I strongly agree with sustainable intensification.
So you're trying to increase the productivity of land with reduced effects on the environment simply to give the space.
So you don't have to convert about everything. But even that is really quite controversial.
There are many people who find that, as I guess the word intensification has so many negative connotations.
How do you how do you argue that something like with as a motive, a description that's intensification can actually be good for conservation?
Well, I think if conservation is going to succeed, I guess I guess, you know,
the WWF chief will challenges is the way you think about it is that we're going to have nine billion people on the planet.
We're going to have to feed them.
We need to kerb climate change and we need to have a natural system that is not completely broken so that we can actually survive on the planet.
So how do you how do you reconcile those three imperatives that we can't get around?
And the only way to Tallahassee imperatives is some form as a state of intense intensification.
I think maybe you would have an old fashioned view of what intensification means.
It doesn't necessarily mean sticking it to pesticides on the ground and degrading our soils.
I think what you're talking about. I'm talking about sustainable intoxication, where you actually build up soil structure.
You you kind of deploy natural weapons that we have. And you actually work in a smart way, you know,
smart irrigation so that you're wasting less water and locally appropriate forms of complex, that kind of thing.
But it is quite a challenge for some of the engineers in this area.
I just I know you're on the board of well, but WWF UK on this and WWF and some of the other organisations,
such as the Nature Conservancy, that they really have embraced this agenda.
You can't think of conservation in isolation.
You have to think of it simultaneously with agricultural policy, with rural economic policy for some of the other deep green energies.
It's much more challenging to do that on. How do you think that's the sort of centre of gravity within the conservation
NGO community is going to evolve in the in the coming in the coming year?
Do you think there will be.
An increasing realisation of this holistic approach to the environment or when it sort of sharpened to the dichotomy that we see,
for example, in in the states between environmentalists and non environmentalist, I think we are in a really worrying time.
I think conservation, actually. And so there's.
You know, there's a pragmatic conservation is I guess I would class myself as one of those that are happening goal,
and I think we all have similar vote and go with in conservation. And I'm I'm prepared to do whatever makes sense to get to that and go.
But then there's a perfectly valid moral standpoint that just says from a moral perspective, as you say, we have to be stewards of nature.
We shouldn't be killing individual animals. We shouldn't be messing with nature.
But, you know, I think it's very easy to take a stand point like that when you were sitting in a developed economy.
And. But I am not necessarily convinced that everyone.
Thinks through the kind of practical implications of taking that kind of standpoint and in the world in which we live.
And I really hope that in conservation we are able to to reconcile those two points of view and
try to think about what kind of a world humanity needs in order to persist in a comfortable way,
which will include nature conservation, a much larger level and is at the moment.
But I worry that we're distracting ourselves by tearing ourselves apart with these kind of rather
styled debates about things that in the end aren't really getting to the nub of the issue,
which is overconsumption and, you know, continued living beyond our means.
We have five questions which have come up, and I'm going to come on to questions.
There's one thing I want to ask E.J. before we move on to questions. So please, can I encourage people both to ask questions?
And if there are questions there already that you particularly like, then then do vote,
which will make it easier for me to have to choose once to ask first?
Um, yeah. I wanted to sort of finish by asking more parochial question about cultivation in the UK at the moment.
So with come out of the European community, which means that we've come out of the Common Agricultural Policy, which means that we have to.
Well, we have to find a different way of supporting our rural economies.
So that moment we put large amounts of money into agriculture because we have to because in the absence of that money going in,
then a large fraction of agricultural businesses would essentially go to the wall.
The government has committed to change the way that that money is allocated moment.
It's largely goes to the single farm payment, which is based on acreage with some complexities around it.
And they have committed to moving not immediately, but over a number of years to what is called public money for public good.
And if you take public good in the technical economic sense and many of the public goods that will be supported are environmental,
public goods and biodiversity and conservation.
Are you optimistic about the way the argument, the political discussion around conservation is moving in the UK?
What would you like? What would you if you were up there in cabinet?
What would you be arguing for at the moment? Well, I,
I'm pretty positive about the coach bill and the environment bill and and about the commitment to moving towards and public money for public goods.
I think that is the right way to go. It's gonna be difficult, but and it's a transition we're going to have to make.
And I guess one thing is that we do have the lorden report from 10 years ago, which was a really influential piece of work,
which was commissioned to say how would we be able to restore nature and within this country?
And and came up with some excellent suggestions. And that means it.
It's been there 10 years. And I think there's a chance now to implement that.
And I think lots of the local NGOs in the UK are the ones I trust, for example,
were really pushing for connectivity and trying to make sure that as we restore nature,
we're still in it in a smart way, as suggested by the report that has more connexion and as well as better managed and larger high quality teachers.
So just from people who are not familiar with it, then and correct me again if I get it wrong.
So what Lawton recommended was that there should be money put in to the environment.
So so landscapes which allow different elements of the landscapes to be connected together to improve the capacity for it to support biodiversity.
And I think that they funded a number of pilot schemes.
And your argument is that was good, but more needs to be done?
Well, I don't think they've actually you know, the Lukasz report hasn't fully been implemented.
There were the pilot schemes.
But I think in combination with the changes to agriculture, what we need to do is be a little bit more smart about a special planning,
saying, you know, if you think of a country like South Africa,
they have a really strong spatial planning in which they've done a kind of thorough mapping,
the kind of governmental level and provincial level of where the critical biodiversity habitat is,
where the and the areas that are more important but potentially replaceable.
And then the areas which are kind of like development and they've got to plan for where they want what they want the countryside to look like.
And in 10, 20 years time. And they're moving towards that plan.
And that allows you to have joined up development as well, because, you know, there does need to be some more development.
And and it's crucial that it gets placed in the right places.
And that when we talk about the kind of job of biodiversity net gain,
we do it in a way that means that at the landscape scale, we are always doing nature.
And so the Lorden report is is the kind of from the biologicals you this is what biologists
would want if you genuinely wanted to leave your countryside in a better state than it.
And then it is now and it's kind of based on ecological principles.
But then you have the other side of the coin, which is about a cave.
What do we actually need in order to grow the food that we need in order to to build the houses that people.
How can we how can we kind of integrate all of that into a spatial plan?
So I think I think there's a little bit more thinking that needs to be done to make sure that the sectors
are joined up so that you're not just focussing on farmland on one side and biodiversity on this side.
So the British government has recently argued that it needs to change the planning regulation to make development easier in some areas,
and they would argue harder in it in other ways, some more granular changes rather than the same rules.
Right. And that's been roundly criticised by many environmental organisations.
But am I right in thinking in what you've said that were that to be applied well, so that there was net gain?
It is not a stupid way of thinking about the future of planning.
It's a special joined up spatial planning at the landscape scale is it is sensible and it's something.
For example, TNC has been pushing a lot in the kind of when you're trying to make sure that
local priorities and local needs are integrated within biodiversity conservation,
that the the underlined word there is local.
And I think a lot of the pushback against what's been announced is, is that lack of localism and, you know, biodiversity is anything.
It's something that that and the reason why biodiversity is so hard to measure and the reason why we haven't got
towards the same kinds of metrics as climate change is that biodiversity is complicated and it's local and that,
you know, the interactions between different elements, biodiversity happen on a range of different spatial and temporal scales.
And so if you don't have this kind of situation in the right scales, then you're going make a mess.
And I think the concern is, is that that that that local element is lost.
And of course, the government is committed to having metrics for biodiversity that will be legally enforceable.
And as you say, is a real challenge to think what they may be.
But an exciting challenge. OK, I'm going to go over to some questions now.
And the first one is from Joshua Jones. And I'm just going to read that if habitat disturbance can increase the risk of spill-over effects.
Does this increased risk and the creation of novel habitats, e.g. green cities, riparian reserves?
Given these habitats that are usually less biodiverse than primary forests and grasslands?
OK, that's a that's a very interesting question. So, I mean, I guess the first thing to say is that we don't necessarily Ms.
Would we wouldn't so expect symmetry in terms of going from pristine down through degraded down to that kind of nothing much
there and then go back up through estimation or through creation of the ecosystems like repairing habitats or urban areas.
So I wouldn't necessarily I would if I wouldn't expect same processes necessary to be operating on both sides.
And I think it's a it's a really interesting question that I'm not sure that anyone has looked at.
How would you would disease risk increase if you restored an area where you put an urban habitat in?
I mean, my gut feeling is, is that it would decrease it.
And I think that's something that is a whole right area that for research.
I think one area where people have thought about this is in terms of vector borne diseases,
especially some of the things you would like to do to have greener cities might lead to increasing mosquito populations.
And this is something that we may even need to think about in the UK at the moment, where spanned from from vector borne diseases,
even though malaria was once one goes back to the Middle Ages, was quite common here.
But there are risks within margin. Arbovirus diseases. West Nile virus.
West Nile fever, for example, and which is in the states.
So it may be something that we need to have to consider even in the UK.
One of my favourite parts of London is the Bonds Wildlife Centre, where I can see some real interesting biodiversity in the middle of the city.
And if it's suddenly turned out that he was breeding mosquitoes that could that could transmit diseases,
it would alter the dynamics of whether one wanted to put cotton in the middle of the city.
I think it's interesting, though, isn't it, because you've got an interaction, climate change.
You've got an interaction of environmental disturbance and whatever the humans are doing to the biodiversity plus climate change issues,
then making some of the vegetable disease more likely to come in, some of the vectors might come in.
But then you also have the question of whether increasing biological diversity dilutes the disease or whether there's other.
What are the processes by which and some of these vector borne diseases actually get into the correct hosts,
the ones that can then we once the human say and.
I think there's an awful lot more research that could be done isn't even into these complex interactions in a changing.
There's a question from Rhasaan Lotto, which has three votes,
which sort of touches on this question that we've talked about a bit and and points out there are obviously roles for government and policy,
but it's anything we can do as individuals in the UK to help prevent future spill-over events.
And again, we are blessed in the UK by not having that many wildlife as useful as we have a Lyme disease and things like that.
I mean, I guess. I guess. I think a really good question.
And I kind of knew that. Well, myself, as an individual, not as a professional and people around,
it's very hard not to get a bit despondent and a bit panicked by the kind of bad news that's coming from climate change and biodiversity.
Thinking, what can I do? And I think.
What Kobe has taught, if nothing else, is that spill over events in somewhere like you,
nonprofits in China, just, for example, could have a major effect on you comfortably sitting in Oxford.
And so, you know,
in this age of globalisation and things that we can do here to reduce the risk of spill-over effects other in other parts of the world.
Can be effective. So, you know, talking like I did before about supply chains that, you know,
huge destruction of nature is to do with our agriculture supply chains and those agriculture supply chains,
the large majority of that, the damage that's being done is livestock feed for meat, which is then potentially ending up on our plates.
So, you know, if we could try to.
Pressure governments, supermarkets to have more transparent supply chains and supply chains that don't lead to the destruction of natural habitats,
that will actually help us to protect ourselves against future pandemics, potentially.
And I think, you know, plastics is a really nice except it's getting the hang of that.
But it's an example of where, you know, in order to make these big, subtle changes, you have to have public will.
So the public needs to really want something to happen. You have to have the government political will and ability to legislate.
And you have to have innovation in industry and business in order to be able to make those changes.
So, you know, in the case of plastics, the session will change.
The public was prepared to have plastics, you know, to have that legislation put in place.
The government was then able to put the legislation in place and we had innovation to shift us away.
And that's happened in a number of occasions. And I think that's what we need.
So as a member of the public, if you can think about your own consumption and if you can make noise, you can vote.
You can look counsel. But also nationally, you can, you know, make it clear that biodiversity matters to you.
Then it gives the space to governments and industry to act.
I find the whole thing about plastics absolutely fascinating,
how it was almost a tipping point and the famous Dave Battenberg programme obviously was the catalyst.
But as you say, it was just right and ready to be pushed over the over the edge.
Let me go to a question from Darren Evans. Much of our discussion in academia about influence and science policy arena.
But how should we engage with business, especially ESG and multi-cap to reporting's?
That's environmental, social.
And do you want governments and multi-cap to reporting so but thinking about natural capital as well as human and financial capital?
I guess this is there is a purist view, again,
amongst some of the deep green NGOs that any engagement with business sort of taints you and affects affects a probity of what you're doing.
I know you don't believe that. How would you answer Darren's question?
But of course, we should in this business, because business that the major financial flows in this world come through business,
you know, and we all depend upon business actually for our daily lives.
So we can't just ignore multinationals.
And, you know, there are there are signs of multinationals actually wanting to to do better for biodiversity.
And often, you know, one might be cynical, but I like to try to stop by not being cynical and then be cynical when the evidence suggests I should be.
But, you know, for me, there is a genuine issue of not really knowing what to do in that climate change.
Carbon accounting is is is becoming becoming more and more feasible.
But biodiversity accounting is really, really hard.
And there is at the moment, no way for a company or government organisation of any kind to be able to say,
okay, here is my biodiversity impact on a metric that's kind of fundable,
a metric that's actually where you can add up all the different impacts you might have to
it in an indirect and say this is the impact of music as an organisation and then say,
how would I go about reducing that impact or even making it so that it was net zero.
And a lot of that problem, some of that problem is just about supply chain traceability.
So governments so companies not really knowing where that stuff comes from.
And that isn't really defensible going forward because nowadays we can trace we just need to do it.
But it's it's more about converting activities in a particular place into biodiversity impact.
Bearing in mind what I said before about biodiversity being complicated,
about the impacts being both direct on the ground and indirect, say, for example, when you know, when you build a.
Something of mine or something. In an area, you could have a direct footprint impact of what you've done,
but you have all these indirect impacts because you have people coming into work
who then consuming more you have more water being used that then extracts water.
You may have pollution going into the woods, that you may have people from small bushmeat in May, you know.
So all these indirect impacts come through and they affect biodiversity beyond the footprint.
And so it is complicated. But I think we just I mean, one thing that Georgina cleanup's Georgina again, you know, one thing Georgina taught me very,
very early stage in my career was when we were doing the list together because we know that things are complicated and that should never procreate.
Trying to get an answer. Of course, you don't want an answer. That's and that's rule.
You don't want an answer that's actually misleading.
But unless you kind of bite the bullet and try to produce something that will give you an approximation to the to the core of the answer,
you're not going to get better and you're not going to actually be able to drive change. So it's much better to be robustly smart.
You run a slightly scruffy in what you're doing then and wait for perfection.
I think as scientists, we will try to move towards perfection sake. So maybe a little bit more.
And Lauren, ready just so that we can get started with this.
I think one other thing that sort of encourages me is that considerations of the environment within the private
sector are beginning to move into what is sometimes called the ESG ghetto and are becoming more mainstream.
And we see a big consortium of American companies coming together to say how
can they actually act in the world where the environment is is threatened?
And I think if you look at it, I got to make a parochial Oxford point here.
But some of the writings of some of our economists, such as Colin Meyer and Paul Collier,
you're talking about the nature and purpose and built in business and the fact
that what we conceive of a business purpose today is actually quite a narrow,
modern construct of the last 20 or 30 years. And if one takes us the longer view what the nature of the business is thinking about multi stakeholders,
not just shareholders, thinking about the people who work for it.
Many of the people who work companies can deeply about what their companies do.
I do think see things that are potentially optimistic.
And I agree. I think, you know, CEOs are people and and that's one reason to just be a little bit wary about going too far
down the line of economic valuation and natural capital and think more about contributions,
because if you if you know what you think about impacts and dependencies in financial terms and you miss a whole
lot of the stewardship stuff and you actually miss opportunities for long term sustainability for companies,
and I think they are realising that. I'm going to move to a question from Andrew Farlow.
Is quite a long question. And Andrew, forgive me, I'm going to paraphrase the Tibetan concentrate on the on the second,
but which there is a lot of talk about building back better after the pandemic at the moment.
Andrew talks about can you articulate a recovery plan that protects the natural world?
E.J., what do you take by the meaning of building back better?
And how would you like to see that actually implemented?
So what it's not is trying as fast we can to get back to the economic trajectory ordeal because, you know, all the IP IPCC scenarios, all the snow's,
all the scenarios by international organisations of domestic climate change specialists
who talk through the different ways in which our economy as a world might progress.
All those notes show that we're on the wrong trajectory at the moment. So so we can't just try to bounce our economies back as quickly as we can.
We have to do something more like what Germany is thinking to do, which is there are opportunities to invest in a green economy.
And those opportunities are. Multifarious, and that requires us to think through.
Which of the changes that we have had to make? We should keep.
So things like. Perhaps more than working, more localism in our purchasing.
Those kinds of things are things that can form the basis of a of a build that kind of economy.
And like I said, we already have the innovation.
So if we if we can actually support some of the innovations in energy in for example, then we can actually move perhaps into a sustainable trajectory.
Peter, I want to try and fit in two questions now to finish off with, and I mention this because I know you are fascinated by the next.
Next question. I could talk about it for very long time ago.
What is China's role of tackling global elite illegal wildlife trade?
What's the possible effect of this belt and road scheme, which I know you've been thinking about?
You say a few words about that, and I want to had one last question. Okay, I'll try to be quick.
China has a pivotal role and they're actually making the right noises about the illegal wildlife trade and actually sustainable economies.
And so I think on that front, engagement with China is it is a useful thing in terms of the Bellson road.
And there's huge potential dangers there and there's huge potential opportunities.
And I think one of the things that we're trying to think about in our group is how do you how do you equip the governments of the
countries to which the belt is going to pass to have the appropriate environmental legislation and the appropriate compliance.
And that when the infrastructure comes, it comes in a way that's ecologically sensible.
It comes in a way that and like I was talking before, means that you have space for nature.
You might even be able to restore nature as a result of that infrastructure and you might be able to move towards sustainable use of some of these.
What I put out and not immediate, just kind of depredation.
And I think, you know. Even if you think he doesn't like Chinese traditional medicine,
the Chinese traditional medicine practitioner organisations are interested in sustainable use of traditional medicine.
You just need to build that together with making sure that the belt and is not just going to lead to lowest common denominator.
Profit driven extraction. So it's it's a real challenge and opportunity.
So the last question relates to something we were talking about just before we came on air, and it's from a good friend of the school, Jeron Larijani.
Do you think that positive messaging about how conservation or.
Right, right. Restoration can help us will be sufficient to counter that?
We're near the end feeling going around. So what we were talking about, they just general feeling of gloom and despondency at the moment.
Well, it has to pee, doesn't it, because you end up with a self fulfilling prophecy otherwise.
You know, if if we all just sit there disempowered and depressed about being near the end, then then then we will be.
So, you know, a lot of what I try to do in my work is, is to showcase places where things have worked.
Showcase people who are doing amazing things for nature and think about ways that we can scale
that up and think about ways that we can get those kinds of positive stories into the mainstream.
I think, you know, governments, businesses, individuals don't bat losers.
So if we and conservation are serious about getting into the public discourse,
we have to do it in a way that thinks to solutions rather than just focussing on the dire state we're in.
So within the U.K., then we have screened on BBC television, the programme by David Attenborough on extinction.
Just an extremely gloomy picture.
And of course, a classic David Attenborough has been just showing the natural world without talking about the threats to it.
And so it's a bit of a shock to see nascent reprogramme going almost completely to the other direction.
What is your view about the balance that one should have between talking about doom and gloom and then talking about the positive side?
This is a question that I have no answer to. I mean.
You have to acknowledge the state we're in. So, you know, you can't just sit there thinking, oh, well, within a source, that's fine.
You have to acknowledge the urgency.
And I think it's difficult conservation at some point because we are in this point of, you know, maybe we are in the last chance to lean a little bit.
Not actually. But we also have opportunities to get out there.
And although the window is closing, the window is not closed.
And so, you know, although it was really, really hard to sit through 15 minutes at that David Attenborough documentary,
if you made it to the last eight minutes, there were.
Very clear messages about the way forward. And coming out of the load, the engine is now an beast.
The things are clear messages.
And we just have to assimilate those and find ways as a society, as individuals to move towards those solutions because they are the.
I'm afraid we are virtually at the end of ah. Let me apologise to the people who post questions that I wasn't able to get to.
Are some radical questions there on talk?
It is with Marianna Masakazu, the wonderful UCL economist who has written a series of fascinating books.
And it will be a discussion about the big failure of small government, Kovik 19, and public sector capacity.
It's not to be missed. She's just the most fabulous speaker.
And that will be at the 13th, the vote on the 13th October at five p.m. So cleats to register.
Join us for that, E.J. Thank you so much for joining me this evening.
It's been a really fascinating talk. You've talked about many of the challenges looking ahead for conservation.
You're one of the people who make me feel optimistic. So keep on doing the wonderful work that you're doing.
And finally, thank you for everyone who's joined us this evening to listen to E.J.
Goodbye.