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The case for conserving nature and its biodiversity needs to be robust and credible. Sometimes that requires a willingness to re-examine conventional wisdom.
Monthly episodes of The Case for Conservation Podcast feature introspective conversations with fascinating experts - from ecologists to economists, young professionals to Nobel laureates, journalists to media personalities.
63 Episodes
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The concept of rewilding has been applied in various ways, from the simple restoration of a single natural process like removing livestock to allow vegetation to recover, to ambitious proposals to reintroduce long-extinct megafauna. While some applications have obvious conservation benefits, rewilding also raises legitimate concerns, especially about how renewed interactions with reintroduced wildlife like large herbivores and carnivores, might affect human wellbeing, livelihoods, and land us...
Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are negotiated by national governments, but they also include input from various societal groups. One of these groups is youth, and their role in negotiations has grown more visible and coordinated over time. But are these contributions helping to enrich discussions and inspire ambition, or simply adding another layer to already complex processes? And why have separate groups if governments are meant to represent all of their citizens? In this epis...
One of the most popular terms in conservation these days is “nature-based solutions” (NbS). The concept is centered around the various ways in which conservation (including restoration and sustainable use) can benefit society, economy and environment. NbS are alternatives to engineered solutions to these problems, which benefit people as well as nature. Sounds straightforward, and the concept has been taken up in government policy and largely embraced by conservation science. And yet it has b...
The term "precision agriculture" has high-tech and “big ag.” connotations, and is usually not associated with biodiversity. But there is a strong argument to be made that it is one of the best things that has happened to conservation in recent decades. Agriculture remains the biggest driver of biodiversity loss in most parts of the world, so anything that reduces its impact might be worth taking note of. Mark McConnell, an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, joins us on this ...
The concept of biodiversity loss is absolutely integral to conservation, and I have never met anyone who has seriously challenged the idea that too many species are going extinct, nor that their extinction is a result of human pressures. So, what do we make of multiple studies telling us that we shouldn’t be focusing so much on biodiversity loss? These studies say that, on average in samples across the world, roughly equal numbers of sites are increasing in species richness and decreasing. Ma...
Although we all have our problems, war is usually not among them. But if you do live in a war-torn country like Ukraine, war is everyones’s problem. And yet, in Ukraine at least, somehow life goes on including activities like conservation of the environment. The question is how, and why, given the many, more urgent, priorities. Marine Elbakidze is an Associate Professor at Lviv University, who focuses on sustainable landscape management, forest governance, and the social-ecological systems ap...
Conservation competes with a variety of other societal priorities and interests for funding and for attention. As a result, conservation projects, programmes and even broader concepts are frequently “packaged” in ways that prioritize grabbing attention. But promoting or marketing conservation initiatives in this way carries certain risks. Among them is the risk of being short-lived and without a real basis in the substance of the actual initiative – in other words a fad. Another is the risk o...
America’s reelection of Donald Trump has brought about all manner of changes in US and global politics. Some have a direct effect on environmental issues while many more may be indirectly consequential. The media, it seems, has reacted mostly with horror and predictions of disaster, and there are probably any number of commentators willing to echo those sentiments on a podcast. It might be more interesting though, and perhaps more informative, to hear the voice of a less critical environmenta...
Among most legacy media outlets and on social media, narratives about environmental issues, as well as social issues, are noticeably more extreme than they used to be. From activists to academics and from organizations to corporations, it has become common to hear phrases like “shattering Earth's natural limits”, “ecological meltdown”, and “boiling oceans”. Much of this rhetoric comes from a place of genuine concern and it usually contains important elements of truth. But it’s also often emot...
It’s not often that biodiversity legislation grabs international headlines, but thats what happened repeatedly in 2024 with the European Union’s new Nature Restoration Law. It happened first because of the ambitious nature of the law; and then because of the political tussle around its rejection and eventual approval. Along the way it gathered a trail of detractors and supporters, and has raised hopes as well as concerns, depending on who you speak to. The law’s overarching target is for Memb...
From time to time certain concepts rise to prominence in biodiversity conservation circles, and some of these follow in the footsteps of climate change analogs. One such concept is biodiversity credits. Biodiversity credits are a mechanism that allow for biodiversity conservation or restoration activities to derive a revenue stream through the production and sale of a quantifiable unit of improvement in biodiversity. Despite the technical and philosophical challenges involved in trading in bi...
Half a century ago a group of more than 2,000 scientists signed a warning of environmental crisis and nuclear war. Named after the French town where it was compiled, the “Menton Message” turned out to be somewhat hyperbolic in its environmental predictions, and did not account for some of humankind’s remarkable developmental progress over the following decades. However, some of its concerns certainly remain prescient today. And so another, smaller, group of scientists convened, on the 50-year...
International organizations, or “IOs” for short, are typically organizations to which multiple countries belong as members. They cover virtually every aspect of human endeavor and there are many that are related to environmental protection. International organizations may influence our lives quite profoundly and yet, outside our own field, we might struggle to name more than a few of them. Furthermore, it has been proposed that most of them are not functioning entities, but rather so-called“z...
Protection of the environment is strongly associated with regulation of the human activities that threaten it, and regulation is usually administered by government. Although almost everyone would probably agree that some regulation is necessary, regulation has a patchy record when it comes to environmental protection. And there is another approach to achieving environmental goals. Free market environmentalism, instead of protecting nature from market forces, harnesses those forces to protect ...
There are few environmental issues more emotive than the hunting of whales. Although the focus of environmentalists has shifted to other topics in recent times, whaling remains contentious whenever it is brought up. This is understandable considering that, for the first half of the 20th century and into the 1970s, several whale species were hunted to near-extinction. But as crude oil took over from whale oil as the fuel of industry whale populations began making impressive recoveries. Neverth...
Agriculture has been by far the biggest driver of land change and land degradation worldwide. And yet, it is also fundamental to the very existence of humankind. This mismatch often comes up in public discourse. Over the past year or two, for example, several European countries have seen extensive farmer protests - against rising costs and restrictive environmental regulations, among other things. Environmental groups have responded to the farmers’ appeals mostly with indignation… and yet far...
Insects are among the most abundant organisms on Earth. About 350,000 beetle species, alone, have been described by science and this is considered to be only a fraction of their total number. In a variety of ways, insects are a fundamental part of natural and human-adapted systems. While some cause disease or ruin crops, others play a key role in ecosystem service provision, for example by pollinating certain crops or as food for other beneficial animals and people. Overall, the loss of insec...
Humankind’s transformation of the Earth is embodied in the idea that we are living in the “Anthropocene”. Most people who have heard of this concept were probably unaware that it describes a specific unit of geological measurement - an epoch. A debate has been ongoing for more than a decade about whether to make that designation official - for the Anthropocene to take over from the Holocene epoch. This debate concluded just a few weeks ago with a definitive “no”. In this episode of The Case f...
Conservation and sustainability scientists are often expected to advise policymakers and other decision-makers. But some of the issues that they are expected to advise on, have broader consensus than others. So, when is it appropriate to advise? When is it appropriate to advocate? When should they simply present all the options or interpretations, and leave it to the decision-makers? Françoise Cardou is a plant and a community ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at Carlton University in Ottawa,...
Sustainability science, which includes conservation biology and various other environmental studies, is not a “hard science” like physics or mathematics. Nevertheless, one might expect it to be reasonably independent of political affiliation. But is this the case? If not, what is the problem with leaning too far in one political direction, especially if that direction is left and generally considered to be “pro environment”? If it is a problem, what can we do about it? Örjan Bodin is a s...
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