Biodiversity: how big is our global biodiversity debt and what can we do about it?
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:11
I think we're ready to start. We have a one, one and a half hour program and it will be split into basically four sessions.
00:22
The first session is just an introduction that I will just do a quick introduction. We do a little poll and then we are happy. We have two presenters, both from Netherlands and both a bit specialized in different things and super interesting talks.
00:41
One is on the lessons we can learn from the past about biodiversity and extinction and then seats in order. We'll talk about the relationship between biogeography, geolinguistics and overlap, et cetera. So he'll talk a bit more general about diversity and modeling diversity.
01:02
So not only biodiversity. So I just want to emphasize that we will, we are recording this meeting and we typically release videos. So not on YouTube, we try to avoid YouTube as much as possible. So we release it through this German TIB portal,
01:21
German Institute of Information Technology and this video will be available on the CCBI license. So just to emphasize that. We will discuss in this webinar several discussion points and some of them a bit controversial. And for many things, we don't have an answer.
01:41
That's why we want to connect with you and want to see people. So there will be some questions on, what is our biodiversity debt? I mean, how bad is it? And whether you believe that some things work or they don't work. And so we have this questionnaire
02:01
and we would like to also find out from you very quickly, what is your opinion and do you believe? So there will be some questions about your like, just to check, like what's the state of, what's the confidence you have in some topics? And then there will be opinion questions. And then after that, we discuss this fourth session,
02:22
we will discuss and we will just have an open discussion and we can then zoom in on things and we want to see the results, how you want it. So usually it gets very interesting. We did a lot of this science webinars. So we know that of course, how to prepare a spicy questions and you will see it,
02:41
it will get very interesting to see results. And sometimes the most interesting science is the things that surprise you, of course, are not the ones you can predict. In a nutshell, what we're talking about here is that, we have this, our planet, and let's say there's a biological evolution
03:01
and that lasted, let's say billion plus years. And we came up to human species. This evolution came to the human species. And so what happened is that if you look to evolution, you have many species kind of interact.
03:21
They are connected. I mean, almost all species are connected in the whole planet. Some are more connected, some are less, but you have also this predator-prey relationship and people discovered in biology that is you have the predator-prey relationship that is kind of leads to some, it's a semi-cautic, but also can lead to,
03:43
eventually leads to very stable pattern. And if you plot it, it's something like this. So it's actually beautifully harmonic pattern where you have the predator-prey being, you know, in going in a circle or some sinusoid function.
04:01
And then you have the people, people pop up. And what happened is that we started catching all this, the mammals and all the animals that we needed to survive and we started catching and we slowly, we were catching all the animals and so-called mega biota
04:20
and the size of mega biota that remains becomes smaller and smaller. Basically, we start catching the biggest one, the mammoths and the biggest ones. And then we got rid of, caught out all the others. And then we go for the smaller and smaller and we do it both in the seas and in the land. And so what happens, you don't have any more that curve,
04:43
the predator-prey curve. The curve goes only one way. It's not more sinusoid anymore. What happens is there's more and more of people and we live also longer, even though there's differences, okay, people in Japan live the longest and in some other places, they live less.
05:04
But what happened is that, yeah, things are really degrading around us and we are not in that predator-prey paradigm anymore. And as you see, we are growing exponentially and the human population and it's still expected
05:20
to continue growing exponentially. It will kind of, we are hoping it will slow down to about 11 billion, but it will still continue growing. So that's the kind of the, you know, just a general introduction to the story. And so now there's something that pops up
05:40
when you talk about biodiversity. So one of the things we could ask ourselves as a scientist, trying to be objective, we call this COVID pandemic. It's a global pandemic, but the question is, if you look objectively, maybe we are the pandemic and the COVID-19 is a self-preservation mechanism.
06:04
You know, should we look at the problem like that? And then the other thing is, you know, so we cause the extinction of many species and who's going to pay for that? And is it only the future generations who pay or there has to be some redistribution?
06:21
So we have to reconsider this monetary system we have at the moment and the mainstream economy. And do we have to reconsider that and question it? So this is the, more or less in a nutshell, the idea of this seminar. So we are going to touch some controversial questions
06:41
and we would like to hear your opinion. And we were thinking that, you know, many of you connecting from different parts of the world and some of you are maybe into biodiversity, some of you are not. So we were thinking to do a little poll and just to get a quick idea of, you know,
07:03
how do you feel and where do you stand? So please, it's a one choice poll. So please go, it's just the 10 questions in the first round. Just please go very quickly and don't Google please, just don't Google it, just hit it to hit like what you feel like,
07:23
I think this is the answer because we would just like to, we don't, it's not the best, you know, it's anonymous and we're not going to take it against you or anything. It's just, we would like to see what is the state of your knowledge, you know, just in a general knowledge. So please just go very quickly and do the 10 answers.
07:47
And then we will show you the results of this answers after we finished with the first talk. Very happy to have with us one more time, Kenneth Reisdijk from the University of Amsterdam,
08:00
the BMAC group, he's an expert for biodiversity and also a bit celebrity person. So please can take over, give us your webinar. Well, thank you very much, Tom and Valentina Del Conte for organizing this very interesting symposium
08:20
on biodiversity depths. And I think the questions already show, will make you realize that major things are going on with our planet and the nature. So it's a great pleasure to present my perspective on biodiversity and extinctions
08:42
and the lessons we can learn from the last 100,000 years. And you see on my starting slide, you see actually the sea level curve for the last 5 million years. And you see that 5 million years ago, sea levels were not fluctuating so much, but they were about 30 meters higher as today.
09:01
And then about say 3 million years ago, they start to fall and they start to fluctuate and the amplitude of fluctuations increase. And as you can see in the final moment at zero, zero million years ago, the fluctuations are most extreme and we are living at the moment at zero, zero
09:22
in the very top of this diagram, where sea levels are now from a human perspective, zero meters on average, but they were 130 meters lower only 18,000 years ago. So what can we learn from all this? And on the other, you see also a nice bronze dodo,
09:42
the extinct dodo, it's a gigantic pigeon that existed on the Island of Mauritius. I will talk about this later. So I'm from the University of Amsterdam, the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics.
10:02
And I have a background in earth science and ecology. I'm specialized in island biogeography and I'm acting now as a lecturer for a bachelor future planet studies and future planet ecosystem science master. And my research is really centering on how fast does the landscape change
10:22
and can nature keep up with this change? And now landscape changes because of geological and ecological processes, mountains form, mountains erode, ecosystems develop and while they develop, soils are formed. And this all occurs at certain rates.
10:40
And nature, of course, is used to all these rates of change in the landscape, natural changes, but humans also change a lot. And this is what I'm very interested to compare. How does the rates of change we humans induce in our landscape, how does that compare to the natural rates of change?
11:02
And can we then relate this to biodiversity and perhaps even to extinctions? And to start my presentation, I would like to take you back to 2005 when I was very coincidentally involved in a discovery of a very rich fossil mass grave
11:24
and bone layer on the island of Mauritius. Mauritius lies about 500 kilometers east of Madagascar and it's central in the Indian Ocean. It's a beautiful island. The background of the picture of my zoom picture
11:41
is actually also from the island. And we did an amazing discovery there. We found a very rich natural mass grave and because it contained also dodo bones, you have to imagine almost two football fields full of dodo bones and other bones from the giant tortoise and other animals,
12:01
it became world news. And this was the dodo effect because many people know the dodo from Alice in Wonderland and from other popular publications. And so we got a lot of attention for this discovery. But of course the dodo was just a bird like any other bird, a eunuch bird that lived on Mauritius.
12:23
So just to share with you some information on this still very beautiful island Mauritius, it's not very big, it's 1850 square kilometers. There live about 1 million people and the island is visited by about 1 million tourists
12:41
mainly from Europe and from Australia. And yeah, and the tourism dependency is very large of this island. I just found this plot of the Mauritian governmental website. And you can see the amount of tourists are fluctuating over time.
13:03
So on the X axis, you see 2080, 2020 and on the I axis, you see 1 million and 1.5 million. And it's fluctuating between this with the kind of rhythm probably related to when we have holidays in Europe or in Australia.
13:20
But you see also this enormous plummet. It falls down when the COVID pandemic begins. And this of course was a major disaster for Mauritius and all the people who lived there who depend their livelihood, quality of life depends very much on tourism. And it actually illustrates also the dependence
13:42
of island states and islands on external income and imports. And this is just one illustration. So I just want to take you back because Mauritius has a history that is part of the Dutch history, the Netherlands. So you see on this map, you see the Netherlands
14:02
and you see this red indented line and it shows the way or ships in the 17th century sailed to the Far East to Indonesia. And it was a very long tour,
14:22
very dangerous tour with a lot of piracy and all these countries in Europe where had wars with each other. So it was a very risky tour. But in 16 or in 1598, the Dutch sailors discovered an island
14:41
and they called Mauritius. And this island was not inhabited. It was not inhabited by humans. It was one of the last islands on the planet that was actually colonized by humans. And in this exceptional state, we Dutch people, we were the first people that started to live on this island.
15:02
And yeah, in our trade history, we marketed, we sold this island to potential investors to pay for these dangerous trips to buy ships and to invest in these enterprises,
15:20
to sail all the way to Indonesia, for instance, to obtain very precious spices. And in order to reduce the risks, the island of Mauritius was a very important station because here the ships could replenish fresh water
15:40
and fresh food using the natural resources on the island. So there was a lot Mauritius, the discovery was heralded at that time in many publications. And at that time, Mauritius was, of course, completely forested.
16:01
So the picture you see here is of the Mayburg Bay in the southeast of the country. And you see a lot of patches that are now deforested. They are mainly sugarcane plantations. But this is the bay where the first ships start settled and where the Dutch colony, the fort was actually raised.
16:25
And yeah, we replenished here water and caught the giant tortoises and other animals that were alive there. And they formed a very important food source
16:40
on our way back home or all the way to Indonesia. And in 2005, I was invited by a friend to visit this island. And the question was, can you and your colleague reconstruct how the situation looked like
17:01
when the Dutch settled there in 1640? What, how did the landscapes look like? And what kind of vegetation was there growing? So I went across the island and did field research with a colleague of mine, an expert in fossil pollen. And we collected samples from various marshes
17:22
on the island of Mauritius. And one site, we actually, by sheer coincidence, we found it was very rich in fossil bone material. And we started to dig there. We asked whether we could use a digging machine
17:41
and the land owners allowed us to use a digging machine. And then we collected this sample after some digging. And this is a scoop, which is about one meter wide and it's completely filled with bones, bones. And if you zoom in, you see tortoise shells lying.
18:03
And if you zoom in, you see here, a foot bone of the dodo. And the dodo is this iconic species of extinction, which features in this book, Alice in Wonderland. That was published in the 19th century and was a bestseller by then.
18:21
And that is why this particular bird has become so famous. And so, as I told you already, we got a lot of attention by the media and that allowed us to collect money to pay for several expeditions to Mauritius. And we investigated the site over several years,
18:43
seven years, we went there to collect samples and to dig. And then we spent more years to analyze the data and to try to find out how this musgrave was formed. Why did all these animals died there on this spot? And you have to imagine,
19:01
it's two football fields full of fossils. And we did this research in collaboration, of course, with the Mauritian partners, the University of Mauritius, the Mauritius Wildlife Fund, and Mauritius Natural Heritage Fund. And we discovered all kinds of animals that are present are extinct.
19:22
About half of the animals we discovered, like the giant parrot, the Lophocyticus, or indeed the dodo, you see here this bronze artist maker, Nick Bibby, who was actually making a mold for a beautiful bronze dodo, but also a giant tortoise with a very long neck
19:42
and some other animals that are extinct now. So of all the animals we found, half of them were extinct. And to me, this was an eye-opener. I was really surprised. And then of course, extinction is part of life. So we all know that 67 million years ago,
20:01
the planet was hit by a meteorite, and that was the end of the dinosaurs and many other species as well, came to an end as a result of this impact and the enormous change of our biosphere that completely changed as a result of this enormous impact
20:23
and led to a nuclear winter, which lasted for at least a year. And so many animals became extinct. And this of course happened much more in the history of the planet. And we call this extinction the end of the dinosaurs.
20:44
We denote it as the fifth extinction, like Tom already pointed out. And the way before the fifth, there were other extinctions earlier in time. And the big ones we call, how we give them numbers, and the smaller ones are just also occurring, but they are not mentioned as being the fourth
21:04
or the third or the second extinctions. But locally, extinctions are part of life. So it was not so surprising that when you find a fossil, a muscrae, that you find extinct animals. Actually, I would be surprised if they weren't extinct. But what was surprising is that most of the species we found
21:23
just had became extinct since the Dutch started to live on the island since 1650. So that is very recent. And you have to imagine that all these animals lived on this island for millions of years. So to me, this was a mystery.
21:40
How did this happen? So in order to understand that extinctions occur disproportionately more on islands, you have to understand that islands actually, that evolution on islands causes specific species to form.
22:06
So for instance, the dodo is unique to Mauritius. Had maybe thousands and thousands of islands, but only one island had the dodo. So if we do something on the dodo on Mauritius, if it becomes extinct on Mauritius,
22:21
it's extinct globally. So that's why the extinctions we humans are aware of, most of the extinctions are known from islands, whereas extinctions in inland are harder to detect. And together with Sitsu who will present after me,
22:41
after this presentation, we then looked into the history of Mauritius trying to understand whether the land use change played a role in causing also extinctions. And as you can see in this graph here, you can see that over time, the island of Mauritius became deforested.
23:04
You see native vegetation cover on the I axis, and you see that it is declining. The green line is dipping downwards towards almost zero in 2000. Whereas on the other hand, you see the increase of humans and you see that humans increase over time,
23:23
not like an exponentially regular process, but rather irregular depending on local historic events. But even though when humans were not increasing in numbers, the deforestation continued.
23:43
So with the loss of forest, you can imagine that the probability of going extinct increases. And you can of course imagine the forest is the house of many animals. And when we deforest, when we remove the forest, there is no house for animals anymore. So they start to become extinct
24:02
or they become more vulnerable for other pressures. Like for instance, the introduction of predators. So oceanic islands generally don't have predators on these islands. But when humans come there, either by coincidence,
24:21
they bring animals on their ships. They are not aware of, the humans are not aware of that they bring rats, for instance, on their ships and that these rats escape on an island like Mauritius. And then also are on the island like Mauritius, no predators, the rats can grow in populations and they can swarm the whole island.
24:41
And they can, for instance, eat the eggs of the dodo. And we think this happened. And besides the rats, cats were introduced, pigs were introduced, goats were introduced, deer were introduced, all kinds of animals were introduced and as there were no predators that would hunt these animals down and kept the population of these animals in check,
25:02
these animals threatened the local animals and the local animals became progressively extinct. So this is what we had found, fossil evidence of local extinctions. So when you calculate the mean deforestation rate
25:22
on the island of Mauritius, it was about five square kilometers per year. So that's, but is that fast? Can nature keep up with these deforestation rates? Does it lead to extinctions? We actually don't know exactly because we don't know exactly how fast landscapes change over time.
25:43
But what we do suspect is that the rates of humans-induced changes exceed ecological recovery times. So when we deforest an area, the nutrient-rich soil on which the whole ecosystem thrives becomes lost, it erodes away
26:01
only within weeks after deforestation, these soils are being eroded away. And soils take about 1,000 years to form a meter of soil. So humans can remove them within a century
26:22
or even faster. And to recover these soils, it takes it on average on the planet, it takes about 1,000 years to recover one meter of fertile soil. And it takes, after you have formed a soil on an island, which also takes centuries,
26:41
after you've formed the soil, it takes, again, centuries to form an ecosystem. So you can imagine that on an island like Mauritius, a rich ecosystem evolved over thousands and thousands of years. And here you see actually a trophic network, which is actually the web of interactions that exist between all these species.
27:03
And these interactions define the resilience of an ecosystem. The more interactions you have, the more resistant that ecosystem becomes against perturbations. So if you have a rich ecosystem, it's perfect adapted to deal with extreme changes,
27:25
for instance, by extreme climate changes or by extreme effects of land changes. But now we have some idea about artificial rates of land change.
27:43
We are also very curious, what are the most extreme rates of land change, the removal of forest in nature? And how did those changes, those natural changes, cause also extinctions?
28:00
So nature can regenerate, but can nature keep up with the human-induced landscape changes? And one of the fastest and large-scale natural changes we know of is sea level rise changes. So when the sea level was very low during the ice age, and it started to rise under 30 meters in total,
28:21
you can imagine that a lot of tropical forest in the coast became flooded and was lost. And you can imagine that many islands became smaller. Did that change extinctions? And we know that the fastest rates of sea level rise were about 40 meters in thousand years.
28:42
So these are extreme high rates when at the end of the ice sheets, the ice sheets melted, and then sea level started to rise on a very high basis. So let's have a look at how sea levels changed over time.
29:02
And again, we can see how at the last few million years of our history, of the history of the planet, sea levels oscillated towards an extreme degree, and we are within the red circle. So we are very coincidentally at the very top of this sea level high position.
29:23
You can immediately see that the average sea level is just around, say for the last million years, it's around minus 65 meters lower below present. And as the sea level rise, landscapes become, islands become smaller
29:42
and some islands fragments and land bridges are formed. So how did the local species that lived on these islands, how did they deal with these changes? So in order to investigate this, together also we started this process, we made a sea level rise models,
30:03
and we started this process with Tom Hangle years ago, and then with Srits and with other colleagues, we finally came to a model that is able to identify the rates of sea level change at the end of the last ice age.
30:22
And this is a complex geophysical model, whereby we use various geophysical parameters to make an accurate prediction about the heights of sea levels at certain time steps.
30:40
And here you see, for instance, for Greece, you see how the area changed over the last 18,000 years. When the sea levels were low, you see that the land was much more extensive, and when the sea level started to rise, all the land shrunk and some islands disappeared
31:01
and some islands fragmented. And from our work in, for instance, in Greece, we noted that, yes, extinctions must have been probable on these islands, but as a result of sea level rise and land loss, but these were local extinctions.
31:21
So these were extinctions that on a few islands, a certain species was lost, but on other islands, the species survived. So this teaches us that actually the effect of sea level rise and natural extinctions, global extinctions, we didn't find evidence
31:43
for that so far. And if we look at what happened on certain islands, for instance, at Mauritius, we see that when the sea levels rose 120 meters, we see that the island contracted 10%, but the dodo, it didn't affect the dodo.
32:02
And we also have another island nearby Mauritius that even contracted 90%, but it didn't affect any of the living species on that island. So even, but also we can see in the red letters below the slide, you can see that the land loss
32:22
on the small island east of Mauritius was lower still than the deforestation rate on Mauritius we had identified from our earlier studies. So we could probably conclude that especially
32:41
at the end of the few million years of sea level change, animals, including the dodo got used to sea level change. So as you can see, this is happening so often during the past million years that the biota probably adapted and dealt with it.
33:02
And the rates of change were probably not so high that it caused extinctions. So, and what we found on Mauritius, we found on other islands as well, especially Seetze's latest research also shows how in spite of very different histories after human habit colonization,
33:25
deforestation occurred and we can infer that as a result of fast deforestation, similar extinctions may have happened on these islands all over the world. So from our model, we can now for instance,
33:44
calculate how much land was lost in the tropical zone. And we deduced that in over the period of sea level rise, about 1 billion hectares were lost in the tropical zone over 18,000 years.
34:04
But over 40 years, the last 40 years, we deforested the same area. It's hard to believe. I find that if I say this, I would like to ask you, please check, perhaps I'll make a major mistake here because it's so hard to believe that we changed so fast
34:24
in such a short time, the face of the planet. And this is all the effect of the fact that we are now living in what we call the Anthropocene or the great acceleration. The time that we as humans or storm just showed
34:43
how we started to grow exponentially, but that's not really the problem. They're not too much humans, but we want too much. So as a result of what we want at the moment, what we want from our planet, we exploit our planet, we deforest our planet. And this is all, if you look into it,
35:03
this is all driven by an economy that is based on monetary growth. The more money grows, the more money there's available for mining and for many other activities. And many people think the earth can handle what we humans do, but the earth might be huge,
35:24
but our biosphere is in fact, very thin. It's a very thin film of only 40 kilometers thick and we can definitely change it. So we should be really very careful with our biosphere
35:41
and we should really monitor what we are doing at the moment with our biosphere because now animals are becoming extinct, but these extinctions are in fact a symptom of biosphere that is becoming degraded. And it's not bad for the planet, but it is bad for us as humans
36:00
because it's the sphere where we live in. So to conclude, in 2020, we produced already much more mass of built materials than the mass, the total weight of the biosphere of anything that lives on the planet. And this only happened in the last 100 years.
36:22
We built already as much as the total biomass weight. So if we continue doing this, there won't be any, yeah, biosphere for us to live anymore in a good life. And this is not happening in 100 years, this is happening now. So we really should monitor what we are doing
36:44
and we should sustain, deal with our natural resources in the most sustainable way as possible. And in this paper, we argue that we also should monitor the effects of mining. So in the end, I would advocate that we need an economy
37:02
based on conserving our life sphere on biosphere and that we all should cherish what we have. It's the place where we live in and where we can together increase the quality of all livelihoods. Let's do this. Thank you for your attention and I'm happy to receive any questions.
37:22
Thank you. Thank you, Ken. And as you see the Ken already had answered on some of the questions we gave you. So if you followed carefully, you could find I think about 50, 60% of answers. And also Ken, he picked up this example with the mining
37:42
and he picked up Croatia on purpose because I'm original from Croatia, he wants to put the blame on me. In the same way, we have this biodiversity debt and so I think we should give the bill also to biodiversity experts on the end of the webinar. But thank you so much, Ken.
38:02
And Valle, are there any questions that people, if you want to ask something, Ken, or if you have a comment, just put it in the chat and then we will forward to Ken. So people that guessed the Croatia in the poll also,
38:21
they should be happy. Blame Croatia for everything, yeah. Yeah, well, I think it's easy to blame. We are all humans and we all fulfill a little task on this planet. So we make our own quality of the biosphere. And I believe that if we change our mindsets,
38:42
not even radically, but if a billion people change mindsets in a focus on sustainable actions, then together we can do it. And we can, whatever we do, whatever jobs we have,
39:01
we can actually improve the way we deal and we handle our planet. So much of what we know now is just fairly recent knowledge. It's only, Tom, it's your core business to monitor what's happening on the planet and all the techniques you evolved, they couldn't be evolved 10 or 20 years ago, right?
39:24
So here's a question like, you know, Maricius, you said they were Dutch sailors and people started populating the island. And so somebody would think, you know, like with some species, I mean, we just ate all the species, basically. We just hunt them down and ate them.
39:42
But in Maricius, and actually that's the prejudice that most of the species that we made extinct, that we didn't make them directly extinct, but we unconsciously, you know, we're not, you know, like in Christianity to say, God forgive them because they don't know what they're doing, right? So we did it completely unconsciously.
40:02
And so that's probably 99% of species that we made extinct is really unconsciously. And just because we are unaware and basically we didn't know what we're doing, right? Yeah, and I can add to that. So to give you an example, most people think that the dodo
40:21
has been eaten to extinction, but it hasn't. The people who went to Maricius, the Dutch, they didn't eat the dodo to extinction, they couldn't. The island was too big and there were too few people. But what we did do as humans, we brought in animals that started to put pressure
40:40
on the local ecosystem, that started to put pressure on the dodo. So it's not so much hunting that does it, but it's a multitude of factors, deforestation, hunting, diseases we bring and animals we bring from other places to islands like this and all together they work and cause extinctions.
41:04
Okay, I have a question. So we have a question now, it's related, it's the same context. So now we, let's say now we know, we know now, now we're a bit smarter than 50 years ago, 100 years ago. And so what do we do now? Which are the good examples? Which are the islands where you say like,
41:21
this is really good system, this island should be really proud of? Which are the good examples? Let me start also with Mauritius. Mauritius is one of the global leaders in restoring ecosystems. So they have set aside two islands at least that are nature reserves.
41:41
One island, tourists are allowed to come to see how the nature looked like that is completely restored. And the other island is like an arc, nobody is allowed to come there, only scientists and nature conservation people to make sure that the process of nature restoration
42:01
is not being interfered. So, you know, we showed that that's a beautiful example of opening up some areas and allowing some areas to restore to their original conditions. So Mauritius is a leading example there.
42:23
Just to say also something very positive and highlight something positive about Mauritius. But I think my research is now also etching on economy because I start to realize the last say year, I start to realize that the way we have organized
42:43
economy, which is a global north invention, the way we trade and put money in front of everything is also a very big accelerator of, yeah, the exploitation of our planet. It's a system in positive feedback.
43:02
So one thing we should do altogether is to take a different perspective on an economy and design an economy that is actually in harmony with the fragile biosphere. And when I say fragile biosphere, I just mean the layer that is nice for humans to live in because if the biosphere changes
43:21
and other animals will benefit from it or plants or whatever. Okay, and with this, we have to stop now. I'm very sorry. We have to stop. We go to the next presenter so you can stop sharing the screen. And as I said, we have the second talk it was by Sitsa Nord there. And I know Sitsa personally,
43:42
I was actually his co-supervisor during his master degree at the University of Amsterdam. And he did a PhD on Island Biodiversity in defendant 2020. And he got a cum laude for his PhD. And now he's a postdoc at the University of Leiden.
44:02
It's super interesting topic. He looks at really super multidisciplinary research as the illustration shows on his first slide. It's a cross between a bit of anthropology and biology and geography. And with this, I would like to pass it on to Sitsa.
44:22
Please Sitsa, keep it 25 minutes and keep some time for questions. The floor is yours. Hello everybody. Very nice to see you. Thanks for putting your camera on and then I don't have the idea that I'm talking to a screen only.
44:44
So, and thanks also to the open geo app for inviting me. So I will talk today about the global hotspots of biological and cultural diversity and explore some of the parallels between biogeography and geo linguistics. Well, at first you might think, wow this is a really weird combination.
45:02
So let me briefly say something about my own background. So, yeah, so I did my PhD in Lisbon at the University of Lisbon about island biogeography in the Anthropocene and Paternary. So the basic idea is how do rates of change
45:21
induced by human activities relate to long-term natural dynamics on islands? So it was really grounded in biogeography. And since about, well, one and a half years I'm at the University of Leiden, I'm doing my postdoc there and I'm trying to understand the environmental
45:42
and societal drivers of cultural and linguistic diversity. So basically what I'm doing is applying the methods and theories from biogeography to understanding the distribution of cultural diversity globally. So, and for example, I've developed our package
46:03
called a lot of space to facilitate the analysis of linguistic and cultural data. It's really work in progress. I thought, wow, this opens you up there will probably some nerdy people. So please, if you're enthusiastic, welcome to join in there. So yeah, we live on an incredibly diverse planet.
46:23
The planet earth house, a fascinating diversity both in terms of living plant and animal species as well as in terms of cultures. And as far as we know, it's the most diverse planet in our solar system. Wow, what a surprise, huh? But if we zoom in to our planets,
46:41
we also see that this diversity is very unequally distributed across the globe. This is true for both biodiversity as well as cultural diversity. However, we also see some general patterns and one of them is the latitudinal diversity gradient, which shows that diversity
47:01
both in terms of plant and animal species as well as in terms of cultures is generally higher closer to the equator. And actually we see that if we look at the association between biodiversity, for example, in terms of mammals and birds, this is strongly associated with linguistic diversity. So during my talk, I will continuously zoom in and out
47:22
between the global scale and the local scale. And when I talk about local scale, I'm mainly focusing on islands because this is where my experience is. And also because they are really relevant in terms of biocultural diversity. So yeah, so what about these islands? Can I briefly touch upon this?
47:42
So islands, 7% of Earth's land area, but 20% of global biodiversity and over a quarter of the world's languages. So, but then if you look at this image, you might be a bit confused. So there on the left for you, on the top map, you see the island floras
48:02
and you see mainly blue circles, light blue, dark blue. And then at the bottom, you see the mainland flora. So the number of plants on the mainland and you see mainly the reddish and orange colors. So basically what you see is that species ratios in this case for plants is generally much higher on the continents
48:23
than it is on islands. However, what this doesn't show is the relative contribution of these species that are on these islands, because those species on these islands are generally island endemic. So they are restricted to a particular island or archipelago.
48:40
So those species that we find there, we find nowhere else on the planet. So islands contribute disproportionately to global biodiversity. Yeah, so, and also the number of species per unit area is much higher on islands. And this is the same is true for languages, as you can see in the bottom right, these bars.
49:05
So a very brief intermezzo about island biogeography. I could talk about this for days, but this is just in one minute. So if you want to summarize it, there was this 1963 paper by MacArthur and Wilson in this book in 1967.
49:22
So the basic idea is if you have a larger island, it can house a larger number of species compared to a smaller islands, keeping all other conditions the same. And also islands that are closer to the continent can house more species than islands that are located further away.
49:42
So, but of course, as Kenneth already showed, island area changes and the same is true for the continent. So only 20,000 years ago, during the last station of maximum, we could walk from Ireland to the Netherlands, from New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania.
50:03
So the world looked really different. And actually we see strong legacies of these past conditions. For example, if we look at endemic island species for in this case, snails and flowering plants, we see that the number of single island endemic species
50:22
is much larger than we would expect based on current area alone. So, and if we consider the past area of these islands, then we are better in explaining the richness on these islands. And then if we look at cultural diversity,
50:43
we also see just like with biodiversity that island area, so environmental settings of environmental characteristics of an island, and in this case area, really explains patterns of cultural diversity. So larger islands also house a larger number of languages.
51:04
So the bottom line is if we talk about biodiversity or cultural diversity, environmental conditions matter a lot. But now, Kenneth already talked about it. We have entered the Anthropocene. We know these hockey stick curve.
51:21
So human activities are drastically influencing biodiversity patterns and also cultural diversity patterns. So if we want to compare what is happening now, how does this relate to this long-term natural dynamics? And for example, here again, Mauritius, Kenneth already showed, okay, in the light gray areas,
51:40
you see the area reduction in say 20,000 years from light gray to the dark gray shades. But then in only 400 years of human settlements, the entire island has been deforested. So really the rates of change have drastically increased. So here's one study I was involved in.
52:02
We compared nearly 30 islands around the globe and we found a consistent pattern that the rates of vegetation turnover, so the rate at which vegetation across all these islands change following human arrival, accelerates with a median factor of 11.
52:22
So this is really drastic. And this correlated really well with the moment of human arrival and could not be explained by these natural conditions. So it's not only the magnitude of change, but also really the rate of change.
52:41
So then island extinctions. So islands, depending on the source, between 60 and 75% of all species that went extinct worldwide were island species. And that's really remarkable if you think they cover only 7% of Earth's land surface.
53:01
And for some taxa like birds, it's even more drastic. So 95% of all birds worldwide that went extinct were island birds. So, and also those species that are now most endangered, 50% of them are island species. So it would be good to focus our attention on islands.
53:20
So that's why we wrote a scientist warning paper. You might've heard about these kinds of papers. So to really put this under attention of the wider public. So, and then for some, if you look at the global top 10, top 15 of the proportion of threatened or extinct species,
53:40
nearly all of them are island nations. So for mammals, there's only one mainland nation and for birds, all the top 15 are island nations. So what are the drivers for this tremendous loss of global biodiversity? Well, basically there are three main threats for terrestrial biodiversity.
54:02
And as you see for marine diversity, it's the proportions are a bit different where exploitation is much more important. For terrestrial species across taxa, habitat degradation is by far the most important drive for habitat loss, followed by overexploitation
54:21
and also introduction of invasive species and disease. So remember habitat degradation, I will talk more about that in later slides, but then before we go there, we move again to cultural diversity because not only biodiversity is highly threatened, but cultural diversity is severely threatened as well,
54:42
even more so than birds and mammals. So, and again, many of those languages that have disappeared or are disappearing were island languages. 25% of critically endangered languages and even 50% of those that are endangered
55:01
and 12% of language extinctions were island languages. So for example, just to give one example, this is an image of Boasir. She was the last speaker of Boa, which was indigenous language for the Andaman Islands. So when she passed away in 2010, her language disappeared as well.
55:21
And this is just one example. There are many examples like this. So when we think about species loss and loss of cultures and languages, these are really much more related than we might think. I will talk about that a bit more in later slides. So I talked about the main drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide.
55:40
So what are the main drivers of language loss and endangerment? So what we see, for example, as you might expect, so the orange bars, the larger the population of speakers, the less threatened a language. So the more vital a language is, as you expect. However, if we look at the main drivers of loss,
56:02
these are things like road density. So how well connected are these cultures to road networks? That's really a main driver of language loss and even also education and years spent in school.
56:21
So people will shift to like majority languages. As we see also where I grew up in Netherlands, more and more there's a shift towards English. And of course you have this also with it in the sub-national level as well that schooling is in the national language.
56:42
So these are two of the main drivers of language endangerment. So Kenneth briefly talked about the six mass extinction. So what about it? So, well, there's good news and there's bad news. Let's start with the bad news. So the rate at which we are currently losing species is much and much larger than background rate.
57:03
So the number of species that we're losing now is much larger compared to the number of species that we lost of the past millions of years. I mean, the rates have drastically increased the rates. However, if we look at the magnitude of extinctions,
57:21
we are not at this 75% of species threshold that's often used as a threshold to talk about the mass extinction. So to remind you the fifth mass extinction was when the dinosaurs were wiped out by this asteroid. So we are not there yet. So why is that good news?
57:41
Well, that means that there is room if we now drastically slow down rates of extinction, we can avoid this sixth mass extinction from happening. However, if we do not act now within a few centuries, we will be at that point again and then we leave our planet much more impoverished
58:00
than what it was and how we found it. And actually, if we look at languages, we see a similar thing. So if we don't intervene now, language loss could triple within 40 years and with at least one language per month, which will total to 1,500 languages by the end of the centuries,
58:20
which is 20% of global linguistic diversity. So we have to tackle these together. So how can we halt these rates of extinctions? So I think there are both practical things that we can do, practical interventions at the local scale and at the global scale
58:42
and also more cultural paradigm shifts, but also about skills. So first again, island biogeography. I showed already that large islands house more species, can house more species than smaller islands. And it hasn't gone unnoticed
59:02
that this theory of island biogeography sometimes also applies to conservation. So again, if we have larger conservation areas, they can also house a large number of species. So if we look at the global scale, only 15% of the global terrestrial surface is protected.
59:25
So if we want to conserve species, if we want to halt biodiversity loss, we have to increase this area. And of course, that's not the only thing. We also need to reconsider how we design our cities, how we shape our agriculture, how we consume.
59:44
So these of course are all related. We cannot only just set apart areas for conservation. We also have to reinvent how we use the land. And to give some examples of conservation success stories at the local scale, for example,
01:00:00
this was the study of around 30 species that were on the brink of extinctions, and they assessed the probability that extinction has been prevented by conservation. Actually, this was a nice paper in 2020. And also here, 65% of those species that they considered were island species. So
01:00:25
really, if we want, if we put our efforts, if we are dedicated, and also investing that both in time and in monetary resources, we can halt species extinction. To give another concrete example of the ebony trees on Mauritius, they were basically a zombie forest. This forest,
01:00:46
this was not reproducing. So all the seeds that fell off the monetary fell just there at the So this forest was a living dead. And why was that? It was because the main Frugia forest,
01:01:02
the largest Frugia forest, they had already disappeared, which was a giant tortoise that was endemic to Mauritius. So when these giant tortoises disappeared, also this forest could not regenerate, rejuvenate. So then what people did in a really bold action was reintroducing
01:01:24
giant tortoises from other islands to Mauritius to revive this forest. So it's not only conserving what's there, but it's also restoring lost interactions. So it's not only about one species or conserving habitat, but also restoring interactions. And then I promise to talk
01:01:46
about shifting paradigms. So here, I think this figure is shocking, if you think about it. 50% of the global habitable land is used for agriculture, and 80% of that, 80% of all
01:02:02
agricultural land we are using to grow feed for livestock or for livestock grazing. 80%, this is dramatic. So just if we would shift our consumption to a more plant-based diet, this would be really a major transition in terms of biodiversity conservation. And then this
01:02:25
image on the right, which is a really nice visualization by R6 Studios, if you consider the total biomass of all wild animals and the total biomass of all livestock, livestock weighs 15 times more than all wild mammals globally. And I think this shows that we really
01:02:48
need to change how we interact with the rest of the living world. So I've been talking about biological diversity and cultural diversity. I switched back and forth between local scale and the global scale. So how are they related? So 25% of the global land
01:03:06
surface are indigenous people's lands, and 40% of terrestrial protected areas and ecological intact landscapes coincide with these indigenous people's lands.
01:03:23
So what I want to say with this, so one thing is that indigenous peoples are really stewards for global biodiversity. But it's not only about, so if we lose languages, we are not only losing words, but we lose world views, how people look around, how people view the living world.
01:03:48
And we need this diversity of voices and ways of viewing the world, rather than this juggernaut of global capitalism that's really driving the loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity.
01:04:02
So we really need this different voice and these different views. And there's this really nice paper by T.S. et al., which really goes into that in much more detail. So to summarize, I know this slide is way too full, but so my point is we need to switch constantly back and forth
01:04:23
to the global scale and the local scale. We have to consider how do different localities contribute to global biodiversity and how can we put all our efforts together at the global scale also to support local communities, island communities, indigenous communities to act in
01:04:42
their role as stewards. And of course, we need to not only look at the local scale, but also in all these interactions between different localities and learn from these different ways of viewing the world and embracing these different
01:05:01
view points. So this was really short, if you want to learn more. So this is my book, it's only in Dutch now, it's being translated into Italian. Hopefully it will be published soon in Italian. And I'm writing a children's book about the same topic as well.
01:05:20
And yeah, I would be happy to take any questions or suggestions. This is my Twitter, you can also reach me by email. So yeah, I'm looking forward to your suggestions. Thanks for your attention. Thank you, Sica. That was really super interesting. And as I said, as I announced it,
01:05:41
super interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary. And we have some time for questions. Just in the poll. It's a much shorter one, but we don't want to lose too much time. So please send the third. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, this connection between this valley has a good question. So, you know,
01:06:05
you look at this correlations, right? So that you you just overlay variables and you correlate them. But what's the causality? I mean, how does it really work? How does it really work? How do you how does the language diversity and preservation helps preserve biodiversity?
01:06:28
Yeah, that's a that's a really nice question. So, so I think, well, you can answer it at them at what I was saying superficial level. Well, and it's not really superficial. So I mean,
01:06:45
so one one thing, what what what what the what the data show is that that's indigenous lands really cover 40 percent of these of these natural areas. So that's really one really concrete, concrete way to to also recognize that these people
01:07:09
are the are the stewards of the of these of these areas. So and and still in many cases, also indigenous people are are still dreaming of that are being driven off their lands,
01:07:22
sometimes even for conservation purposes. So I think one thing is to to to yeah, to acknowledge that and also to shift perspectives in these regards. And and yeah, also, well, there was this question about the value of global biodiversity.
01:07:46
So it's also yeah, we are also not valuing that in in economic terms. So if people are yeah, I mean, so, for example. And now we had to, for example, if we think about Mauritius,
01:08:04
but maybe if I may interrupt you, maybe there is a difference in a culture. Maybe that's really the key, because the you know, many Aboriginal cultures, they educate their children, you know, to, you know, to be more to be more respectful to be to take care of their land. They're more
01:08:23
like a driven with happiness, you know, with the happiness about how they collect, harvest the land, how they want to grow, you know, and happiness in the West is more, you know, more driven by, you know, income by by safety, by technology. Yeah, but I also think that's maybe
01:08:50
a bit too simplistic, because there are also, of course, many examples of of also indigenous cultures that have driven species to extinction. So it's not necessarily that it's not
01:09:03
it's not that, that, for example, one part of the world is more is does everything better that I don't think it's maybe like that. But I think that we need to to reconsider like there's one global narrative that we should all strive for, which is, is
01:09:23
perpetual growth, economic growth at the cost of of everything. So and I think also in that regards, we can, of course, learn from from different ways of viewing the world. And also, yeah, that there's a point to say, well, this is enough. And as of course, as you say,
01:09:46
okay, how why don't we measure? Why do we still rank countries based on their gross domestic product and not on their state of well being? I mean, of course, efforts are being made towards this goal. Yeah. Okay, and tell me something you mentioned this thing that the half of the
01:10:06
agricultural land is the basically livestock production. Yeah, and it's like quite extensive, right? Mm hmm. And so do you think 80% 80% of all agriculture are 77% of all? Yeah. But it's also very extensive, you know? Yeah. But then in Netherlands, you have this very
01:10:25
super intensive production of livestock. Right. But there are also ecological problems in Netherlands, too much nitrogen released in soil, water, but first, where do where do we, I mean, in the Netherlands, what do those cows eat?
01:10:44
It's not I mean, I think, like that is like one of the largest importers of soy globally. Yeah. So I mean, you cannot, that's why I say, well, we cannot only go for local solutions, we cannot only look within the boundaries of the Netherlands, but we have to consider also these global flows of trade and but what I'm trying to ask you, imagine our next
01:11:05
30 years up to 2050. Do you think it's completely realistic to think that we can do this, we can still grow the livestock production, even intensive, or we have to really go for the plant based diet? You know, we just have to change the diet will be 10 billion soon. Yeah, yeah. What do you think?
01:11:24
Well, I think well, of course, we are now only talking about, you know, just as inputs and outputs. But of course, the whole way we treat living beings is is respect less, right. So it's not only it's not only about inputs and outputs, but it's also that animals are being
01:11:46
grown to be killed constantly in a in they have a life cycle, like intelligent animals, they have a life cycle of a few months to years, we we impregnate cows to give milk to humans,
01:12:03
we kill the male, we kill the male cows, because they have no economic use. So this is really a complete, I think, well, if you would design a society from scratch, this is not how we do it. So, okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, we are close to the end. Can you please open the poll
01:12:25
results and share the screen? I don't know, we can see, you can just share it with everyone. So this is the first one. So you see my screen. And let's see what was the so many of you are
01:12:41
actually, let's say, a bit agnostic to biodiversity, or so marginally only. So I think more than 70%. Let's see if you got the biodiversity intactness index. Correct answer is Canada. So most of people, most of people got it wrong. Then the second one is the highest
01:13:06
biodiversity index is Brazil. That's the correct, most of people got got it right. The last 50 years, the human activities led to 60% decrease of wildlife.
01:13:21
So most of people got right, but some people also clicked on 40%. The case of global warming 102 degrees, global sea level rise. Most of you got it wrong. It's not a huge growth, but it's half meter. Can I say something about this? Yes, I'm following
01:13:45
this for about, I think 20 years, and each time the values are increased. So now they, the scientists are worried about the breaking up of a major glacier in Antarctica, which would again accelerate even the prediction. So it's a fishy, it's the state of the art knowledge
01:14:05
at the moment. Probably will be increasing over time. Okay, but I just took the one that's published paper, and you know the groups did the work, and they say half meter. Then the lowest eustatic sea level last 100,000 years, it's minus 120 meter. You
01:14:25
saw it from Kent's, I think, presentation. That was the lowest in the last 100,000 years, about 120 meter. But most of you got it wrong, so you put minus 30. The average level of
01:14:40
sea was in average minus 60 something, but the lowest point was minus 20, about minus 20. The fastest natural global sea level rise recorded so far. Ken, you want to answer this one? You said four meter, I think, per century or something.
01:15:01
Yes, that's right. Yeah, four meter per century. So most of the people got it wrong. So when the ice sheet started to melt just at the end of the ice age, a lot of water was released in the oceans. So you know, in some places you see you're too pessimistic, in some places you see you're too optimistic. Loss of large animals can lead to loss in biomass, and there's a paper
01:15:28
published that estimates about 40%. So again, most of you got it wrong, only 40% got it right. So it's a 40% loss in biomass. Humans are potential threats for extinction of how
01:15:44
many species by 2050? It's about 1 million. That's the estimate, but so here you got it wrong. So although you're not biodiversity people, you got it right. And the last question, what kind of diverse loss most rapidly? And most of you got it wrong, it's the linguistic diversity.
01:16:08
And that's the work of Sica. That's why he's doing his work because it is happening most rapidly. So it's the linguistic diversity is disappearing most rapidly.
01:16:21
These are the first. Vali, you wanted to say something? No, I just wanted to express my sadness when talking about what we are losing. Okay, let's do the second poll. Share it with me, please. And I will open also in the browser.
01:16:45
Here's the second one. Estimate the total number of islands larger than 10 square kilometer. It's about 6,000. So most of you got it wrong also. It looks like people put 25,000.
01:17:01
It looks like, you know, yeah, you will, you were thinking that it's a much bigger number, but it is only the one that the bigger than 10 square kilometers, so 10 pixels of one by one kilometer. So which one is the correct one? Sorry, what's the right answer? The 6,000. 6,000 is the, so only five percent got it right. Was the percentage of global biodiversity
01:17:27
across taxa? So the correct answer is 20 percent and most of you looks like a reasonable number. One quarter you got it right, but it's not five percent or ten percent, it's 20 percent.
01:17:47
Was the percentage of all recorded extinctions in the past 500 years? Ken, answer? Was it the 70 percent, I think? I don't know. Yeah, I think it's 70 percent,
01:18:10
actually. Depending on the source, it's estimated between 60 and 75 percent, but it's, of course,
01:18:20
important to know that these are recorded extinctions. And you cannot also point it out, yeah, you might argue that it's also easier to recognize the island species went extinct because, you know, well, if we haven't found it here, well, then it's gone everywhere because it was endemic. So, okay, the mining area of the world,
01:18:44
it's about size of Croatia, so three of you got it right. So most of you over pessimistic, so it's not size of Germany, it's the size of Croatia. Then the highest per capita CO2 emission bill, the highest bill should go to Australia, no, sorry, Canada. Canada is the biggest CO2 per
01:19:10
capita emission, so Canada is the worst. Why is this? Do you know why this is? Is this because of tar? You know, they use crude oil tar for making... I will have to look at it,
01:19:24
but yeah, also I think they drive large cars, inefficient cars, the country is, you know, sparse and there are big distances, so I think they have to commute and then they spend more fuel. But also they are producers of oil and things. From the below listed countries,
01:19:44
the highest per capita biodiversity bill should probably given to... The answer is Australia. Australia, there's a paper published that they say that they are responsible for relatively largest extinction and change in the environment very quickly, and they are
01:20:05
not a large population, so there are, I think, 26 million or 30 million people, so it's Australia when you look per capita. Then country investing the most in the megafauna conservation is Namibia,
01:20:23
so it's Namibia actually, so they lead, from these countries they lead. But Costa Rica is also good, so those of you that put Costa Rica, you're not so much off, but those of you that put... And this is only on the megafauna, so it's not a conservation
01:20:42
of everything, just megafauna, so it's a bit of nuances also in the questions that you have to read it. Total estimated annual spending per capita to cover the conservation cost, help preserve biodiversity, so how much will it be? So there's no correct answer, this is a trick
01:21:04
question I put, there's no answer, so it's very interesting to see that it is distributed kind of equally, but there's no correct answer, I don't know what's the cause, somebody will have to calculate. I'm thinking it's more towards the bottom, it's towards the bottom, it's not, it's for sure not 100 euros per year, that's for sure, whoever put that, you are completely
01:21:26
over optimistic. Then we have the country with highest percentage protected area per capita, it's Germany, Germany has the highest percentage of officially protected area, but okay,
01:21:44
level of protection also, that's another discussion point, but they have the highest highest percentage. You would expect Canada, yeah, I was also thinking it's Canada, but turn out it's Germany. Number of trees European Commission has promised to plant, it's 3 billion,
01:22:02
so it's 3 billion, they promised by 2030, well they promised, they have a big program, but very interesting, they would like to replant 3 billion plants, forest plants over Europe until 2030, so next 20 plus years. So these are these questions, and now the last one is the
01:22:24
opinion questions, please Valle. I don't hear anything anymore. Yeah, let me open in, I open
01:22:40
a browser, this is the opinion questions. So is the COVID pandemic and loss biodiversity, loss of biodiversity, this habit correlated, most of you believe it's, yes, increased interaction between humans and wildlife is the main reason behind this pandemic, in fact there is a word published
01:23:01
on that, Ken just sent me a paper, and so you got this thing, I think you are going in the right direction, so yes it is a highly correlated, most likely, and I'm also glad that you believe in that, and nobody believes that the COVID-19 was a leak from the Wuhan laboratory, also nice to see.
01:23:23
Then we have how satisfied are you with nature conservation policies in country region, most of you unsatisfied, seriously disappointed, so I think we are going in a greater Thunberg direction here, which is good, which is actually a good thing. The most important
01:23:42
earth reservation variables in your opinion should be maps of natural habitat in darkness levels, so how much do we impact the natural areas, so that's more important that net primary productivity, but it comes as a second thing, also interesting. Can agriculture
01:24:04
be combined with biodiversity restoration while being economically viable, we spoke about this a lot, and you think that we have to re-innovate basically, and some of you don't believe in it, but most of people, 80% I think you answered yes, so that's nice to see. What could be the
01:24:22
best policy to reduce loss of biodiversity, loss of wildlife, we offered some really extreme things, total combat against polluters, looks like most of you agree in the international collaboration and conventions, and that most of countries should accept the same way in European
01:24:41
Union, we now deal with these problems, I think it could be scaled up to the whole world. Current mainstream economy in the future, we need a smooth transition to economization of ecosystem functions, very interesting, most of you think that actually the system is, let's say okay, but you just have to account for the natural services and
01:25:04
value of the natural land more objectively, and yes, last one, how much of your blue twinkle would you be willing to pay for biodiversity conservation through taxes, most of you are between five and fifteen percent, so it's a good chance that that's
01:25:24
going to come, but it's nice to see that you are willing, only six percent of you are not willing to pay anything. Can I just say something, because I just added the link to a very interesting, not yet published study, that if you want to conserve 44% of the whole
01:25:47
world nature, we need to pay about 0.12% of the global gross domestic product, which seems pretty low, and the idea is that the indigenous people who live in
01:26:05
this forest in Amazonia etc, that they are being paid, they get just an income to conserve their areas, it's a beautiful idea, and people are really thinking about, you know, how much will it cost, is it operationable, what do we need, where do we need to
01:26:24
conserve, so there are hopeful developments in this direction. Can you one more time just just repeat please, how much to conserve, how much? 44%, which is of the global terrestrial planet, if I'm right, it's one of the studies of one of our postdocs
01:26:44
who also was involved, James Allen, and then these other economists, they calculate how much would it cost to conserve this and to pay people to conserve this region, and you don't want to build regions and to exclude people, you want to, as Sits actually points out,
01:27:02
you want the indigenous people to take care of their own environment, which in the end is beneficial for our whole biosphere, and then it was 0.12% of the gross global domestic project. That sounds like a very low number, you know, it sounds like it's really cheap,
01:27:22
but it's okay, that's only 44%, I mean, if you come to like 80%, maybe this number will triple, and which 44%, I mean, maybe you, you know, if you go for the low-lying fruit, but let's say if you go to small tricky areas where you have a conflict of interest and
01:27:40
like really highly populated areas like India or China, you know, maybe then the cost will be higher, but still it's nice to see, thank you for sharing that paper, that's super, super interesting, and with this thing we have to stop, unfortunately, we went a bit over time, but one more time, super big thanks to Ken and Sits, very interesting talks, and we will,
01:28:05
we will share the talks, they will be published, the video will be published, you can watch it, so anything you missed, you can come back and watch, and also we will, we can share the results of the, of the poll, so you can see also the, we will share the correct answers, but for that you need to subscribe to our newsletter, so just go to our website, opengeohub, maybe Vali, you can
01:28:25
send a link, just subscribe to our newsletter, and we will publish in about two weeks, we will send a newsletter with the results of the poll, and also the link to the video, so you can again watch the video and read about the results, and see whether, whether things went interestingly,
01:28:42
most people answer wrong, or they have a bit diverging opinion, so yes, and with this one more time, thank you so much Sits and Ken, and good luck with your work.