Why is the World Wildlife Fund warning humanity could be at risk of losing "invisible" benefits of  biodiversity? - video Dailymotion

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe interviewed Becky Chaplin-Kramer, Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund

Transcript

00:00Welcome back to Global Business Europe.

00:03The World Wildlife Fund is warning that humanity could be at risk of losing invisible benefits

00:08of biodiversity.

00:10They found that the vital support that wildlife provides is underrepresented in science and

00:15policy discussions, and it's feared that that could mean a critical lack of action

00:19on conservation.

00:20Let's talk now to Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer, who's the WWF's Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist.

00:27Welcome to the program, good to see you.

00:29So give us a bit of a background to this.

00:32What's the scale of the problem?

00:33How much risk is our biodiversity under?

00:36Well, the IUCN has listed 50,000 species that are threatened with extinction.

00:42That's more than a quarter of the total number of species assessed, but there are millions

00:46more that we don't even know the status of, and so many of these play integral roles in

00:51their ecosystems.

00:53And the roles they play are in jeopardy long before they actually go extinct.

00:56They can't perform their regular duties at lower abundance, and what WWF has found is

01:02that wildlife populations have declined on average 73% since 1970.

01:08So is this what you mean by this term, invisible benefits?

01:11Are you saying that biodiversity loss, species loss, has a bigger impact than just that in

01:16itself?

01:17Yeah, well, you know, some of the benefits that wildlife provide are conspicuous.

01:22We can see them.

01:23Food from hunting or fishing, pollination and pest control, wildlife-based tourism is

01:27a huge industry, but wildlife are at work shaping ecosystems all the time, and just

01:33because we can't see them doesn't diminish their importance.

01:36Animal seed dispersers greatly influence the diversity and even the amount of carbon stored

01:41in a forest, the largest seeds that would otherwise just drop to the shade of their

01:46parents if the animals didn't disperse them.

01:49Dispersers keep down overgrazing and diseases, grazers and burrowers aerate the soil and

01:54dramatically increase the diversity across landscapes.

01:57And many species actually engineer whole ecosystems into existence, like beavers, whose dams create

02:05new lakes storing and purifying water.

02:08So is this an issue, do you think, that's currently being taken seriously enough?

02:14I think we just don't appreciate the connections between species and ecosystems.

02:19Sometimes when people think about nature, they think of a place.

02:22And that's not wrong, but it's also all the life inside the place.

02:26So if we're only preserving the places without attending to the species that inhabit them,

02:31we might be preserving increasingly empty places.

02:35And without their wildlife, as I just said, ecosystems won't look or function the same,

02:39so they can't necessarily provide those benefits to people.

02:43So what should governments and policymakers be doing to try and change things?

02:49Well, one part is to bring together these different goals that we have.

02:52We have frameworks for biodiversity.

02:55The countries will be getting together again next month to discuss how to mobilize finance

02:59for the ambitious commitments that have already been made.

03:02But we really need to start connecting the agendas between species and ecosystems, recognizing

03:07that the success of one really depends on the others.

03:11What about us?

03:12That's the policy level, if you like.

03:13But what about individually?

03:15What can we do to try and keep our biodiversity?

03:19Well, I think a big piece of it is recognizing that, again, it's not just about setting aside

03:25places, which is super important, but wildlife face a lot of other threats, many of which

03:30we contribute to, in addition to habitat loss, over-exploitation, too much hunting, overfishing,

03:38pollution, all the pollution that we create, invasive species, when we are transporting

03:43our goods or even our vehicles from one place to another, we often carry species with us.

03:48And of course, climate change.

03:50So in order to really address this crisis, we have to be tackling all these problems

03:54together.

03:55And when it comes to losing species, the value of wildlife, if you want to put it like that,

04:01it's sort of bigger than just their physical existence, isn't it?

04:04We lose more than just a species when we lose them.

04:07Yeah, absolutely.

04:10It's hard to even pick one species when we talk about these things.

04:17They're also interconnected, but there are some species that ecologists call keystones,

04:22like that center stone in an archway, that if you pull it out, the whole thing would

04:26collapse.

04:27And so we talk about keystone species because we've actually witnessed the whole ecosystem

04:31changing when they've been removed or significantly reduced.

04:34A lot of these are predators, like wolves or sea otters that we feature in this paper,

04:40whose overhunting led to explosions of grazers like deer or sea urchins that completely transformed

04:46the ecosystem.

04:47In the case of sea otters, the urchins decimated kelp forests without the sea otters to control

04:52them.

04:53And along with that went all the benefits that kelp forest provides, carbon storage,

04:57protection from coastal storms, nurseries for many fish.

05:01We can't just think about the economic value of the sea otter pelt, but really all of the

05:05different benefits that came from that intact and healthy ecosystem.

05:09Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer, great to talk to you.

05:12Thank you so much for coming on the program.

05:14That's Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer from WWF.

Why is the World Wildlife Fund warning humanity could be at risk of losing "invisible" benefits of biodiversity?

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