We Are Biodiversity

The Manomet Team | September 27, 2019 | Magazines

John Hagan

President

This article was included in our Summer 2019 issue of Manomet Magazine.

In March 1932, despite conservation efforts, “Booming Ben,” the single surviving Heath Hen, a grouse-like bird, was seen for the last time on Martha’s Vineyard. A year later, Henry Beetle Hough posed a rhetorical question in the Vineyard Gazette ‘Is nothing to follow the extinction of this bird except one more lesson in conservation for school books, and a sentimental mourning?’

Indeed, the extinction of the Heath Hen was nothing more—another lesson for school books. Many such lessons have since followed, avian and otherwise. A species winks out. The earth rotates just the same, unencumbered by the loss.

Every two years since 1998 The World Wildlife Fund publishes the Living Planet Report. This bi-annual report provides a single, standardized global index of biodiversity. In every report, including the most recent in 2018, the statistics become more dire. Each report is followed by a flurry of 24-hour press coverage. Then, with a collective global yawn, everyone goes back to whatever they were doing. We wait two years for the next update.

In 1998, the first report cited a 30% decline in global biodiversity since 1970. In 2010, the decline was 52%. In the last report, 2018, the decline was 60 %.

What a clear, quantitative chronicle of the demise of life on earth. Every two years conservationists protest, “This must stop!” But the stats continue. The trajectory of the Living Planet Index suggests that all biodiversity will be gone by 2060. It is time to rethink biodiversity conservation.

Biodiversity is defined as life in all its forms, from the gene to whole ecosystems, including all the ways that species interact with each other. Life (biodiversity) began on earth over three billion years ago. (Cyanobacteria are biodiversity too.) Based on the fossil record, in all that time there have been five mass extinctions. The sixth is underway.

John Hagan at a timber harvest ca. 1990s. Photo from the Manomet archives.

Fishing observer weighing sub-sample of by-catch on a trawler, ca. 1990s. Photo from Manomet archives.

Trevor Lloyd-Evans at work in the banding lab. Photo by Jerry Monkman.

Knowing this, a global plan for conserving biodiversity was forged in 1992 at The Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero. Nearly two decades later, acknowledging a failure to deliver, the 2010 the Convention on Biological Diversity in Aichi, Japan said “Stop!” again. By 2020, the Aichi convention decreed, biodiversity would be saved.

Fast forward to last spring, April 2019. A more comprehensive and authoritative report on biodiversity was issued, this time by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The 1800-page report was authored by 145 scientists from 50 countries over three years. The authors concluded that of eight million known species, one million are facing impending extinction. The prestigious journal Science summed up the report this way:

“The state of biodiversity and ecosystems is at its most perilous point in human history and the decline is accelerating, warns a landmark assessment released today. But the hope is that the bleak assessment… will finally persuade governments and others of the need to change course and prevent further harm to the ecological systems that provide for human well-being.

The report’s essential conclusion, nearly thirty years after Rio, was—there is no pathway to sustaining biodiversity on earth that does not involve a transformation of how humans use and consume resources.

Finally, the crux of the matter.

In a geologic blink of time humans have altered one-half of the earth’s terrestrial surface to grow food for just one species—us. It’s not our fault that we need to eat. We’re likely to double food production by 2060. Is earth up to that challenge?

As more and more people rise out of poverty in the 21st century diets will shift to more like ours in the U.S.—more meat and dairy, which of course requires more land or an intensification in agriculture. Just feeding humanity accounts for 26% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Humans need (or want) a lot of planet.

If we want to save biodiversity, and keep eating, we’ll need to transform how humans live on the planet. How we grow food. What we eat. How we keep warm. How we move around. Everything is on the table. Depending on your age, your participation in this “project” might be optional, but your children’s will be mandatory.

Since the 1992 Rio convention, most global biodiversity conservation strategies focused on preservation—setting aside land protected from human use or development—Biodiversity Plan 1.0. It was the left-brained linear-thinking thing to do. While helpful, conservationists now understand that approach alone cannot conserve the richness of life on earth. We humans require too much land for our own existence. At best, we might set aside 15% of earth just for nature.

In the 1980s, a decade before the first Living Planet Index report was published, Manomet figured out that we were never going to save birds by just studying birds. Larger forces were at play that we had to understand if we cared about birds. So Manomet began working with the timber industry, which obviously had a major role to play in forest bird habitat. We forged a partnership with the industry. It industry welcomed our research because we approached the issue without any preconceptions about what we might find.

As it turned out, the news was mostly good. Forests managed sustainably for timber in Maine were good for a great diversity of birds, many of conservation concern. And no bird species that we could find was in jeopardy as a result of timber management. We searched high and low for an analog to the Spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest and could not find one.

Other species, however, were negatively affected by timber management, most notably lichens and mosses that truly require old trees—trees that are difficult to retain in a financially-driven forest system. Together with the industry, we came up with practical (affordable) ways to keep old trees in the managed forest landscape.

The timber story is an example of what I call Biodiversity Plan 2.0—the integration of biodiversity goals with human goals. The genius of Plan 2.0 was that it did not require setting aside land for protection, which is very expensive. A lot more land could be included. There was much to be gained with this approach. The hitch is that conservationists has to acknowledge, respect, and understand that humans have more goals, maybe even more pressing goals, than just saving biodiversity.

Plan 2.0 has accomplished a lot. Manomet and other organizations discovered how much good we could do by working with the for-profit sector, if we could accept that we were not going to get our “perfect” natural world. At the same time, the for-profit sector was beginning to realize that civil society did not want its own consumption habits to wreck the planet, or their children’s future. A purely financial case emerged for working with nonprofit organizations like Manomet.

Manomet began working with fishermen in the Gulf of Maine, designing fishing gear to reduce by-catch (unwanted fish) and improve fishing efficiency. In the last decade Manomet’s Shorebird Recovery Program has started to work side-by-side with agriculture and aquaculture businesses, both of which have important roles to play in maintaining, and even creating, shorebird habitat. Plan 2.0 offered seemingly infinite opportunities for open-minded conservationists and business leaders.

Plan 2.0 was a bit step forward, but it is clear now that Plan 2.0 will be insufficient, just as we learned 20 years ago that Plan 1.0 would not be enough.

What we now understand is—we are biodiversity. To save us, we are we are going to have to transform how humans live on the planet—this is Plan 3.0.

This is the real green new deal—to save biodiversity we’re going to have to save ourselves.

To be clear, Plans 1.0 and 2.0 still provide value. We do not need to replace those plans, just add to them. We’re going to need another plan to get to our destination—this time, one that our species cannot live without.

The problem with continuing to pitch the biodiversity problem as a biodiversity problem is that not enough people care, or have time to care, about biodiversity. Birders and conservationists are too small of a force to “transform how humans live on the planet.” And yet, that is what the U.N. report says it will take.

If we must transform how humans use resources to save biodiversity (i.e., us) everybody is going to have to participate. The critical question becomes, ‘how do we get everybody to participate?’

The only way is to find different values besides biodiversity that motivate everyone to take the same basic actions. Talk less about biodiversity and more about food and water, safety, and relationships. And because financial security can help with most of our basic needs—food, water, shelter, talk about financial security.

Heresy? No, because whatever plan we’ve been following isn’t doing the job we need (see the 2019 UN report).

Given the profound implications of a problem like climate change to anything and everything that matters to humans, we need everyone rowing in the same direction and working the same solution. Help if you care about biodiversity. Or, because of food security. Or, because of social justice. Or, because of your 401(k), assuming you have such a thing as a 401(k) to think about.

This is why Manomet has engaged the for-profit sector over the past three decades. While the sector has enormous power to create an unsustainable world trying to meet our needs, it is also the only force large enough to “transform how humans live on the planet.” We simply cannot “transform” without the for-profit sector.

We all want the next generation to thrive, and the one after that, too. Photo by Jerry Monkman.

And in the end, is it really “us vs. them,” or is it just “all of us?” We all want to thrive. We all want the next generation to thrive, and the one after that too. Some of us want other species to thrive too. But we have to have food, water, and safety ourselves. Too many people don’t have these basic needs. It’s hard to think much about watching birds.

If we are going to transform how humans live on the planet, we will need to learn how to integrate the diverse values that make up our global society. Maybe we conservationists don’t end up with exactly the world we wanted, but we’ll end up in a far better place than we’re headed now.

How many more Heath Hens will there be before we all figure out we have a common destination?

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