An Introduction to Sustainability Goal 15: Ecosystem Degradation & Biodiversity Loss

0:06 hello 0:07 my name is bill albat i'm a faculty 0:09 member in the school for environment and 0:11 sustainability 0:12 at the university of michigan today i'm 0:15 going to talk to you about 0:16 one of the un sustainability development 0:18 goals goal number 15. 0:22 part of this course is an introduction 0:24 to sustainability and development 0:26 and to do that we're going to go through 0:27 a number of unsdgs as they're known 0:31 these will this will include no poverty 0:34 climate action life on land reduced 0:37 inequalities 0:38 and life below water 0:42 unsdg 15 0:46 is about protecting restoring and 0:48 promoting the sustainable use of 0:50 terrestrial ecosystems 0:52 sustainably managing forests combating 0:55 this 0:55 desertification and halting and 0:58 reversing land degradation and halting 1:00 biodiversity loss 1:02 there's a lot in here and we're going to 1:04 try and unpack some of it 1:06 so bear with me as we go through the 1:08 next series of slides 1:12 to help illustrate unsdj 15 i'm going to 1:15 use an example 1:17 of a place that i know quite well the 1:19 savannah ecosystems of east africa 1:21 in this example that you can see there 1:24 are quite a few cheetah 1:25 feasting on a kill one of the things 1:28 about cheetahs in this particular 1:30 ecosystem 1:31 are that they really like short grass 1:32 plains but these short-cast planes tend 1:35 to be created and co-created 1:37 by pastoralists in their livestock 1:40 therefore 1:41 in trying to preserve cheetah should we 1:43 eliminate 1:44 all humans from the ecosystem or should 1:46 we find creative ways 1:48 by which people and wildlife can share 1:50 the same ecosystems 1:53 if we look at what some of the 1:54 scientific work has done has been 1:56 documented on cheetah 1:58 there's been a global decline in cheetah 2:00 numbers 2:02 you can see that the historic range of 2:05 the cheetah has been that in the in the 2:06 gray uh across 2:08 parts of africa as well as the middle 2:11 east and 2:12 and asia and you can see the current 2:14 range 2:15 in red in between there you can see 2:18 little 2:19 some blue polygons and those blue 2:22 polygons are protected areas and you can 2:24 see 2:24 that for many cheetah they range quite 2:28 widely outside of protected areas 2:31 so does increasing the number of 2:33 protected areas 2:35 actually mean that we're going to 2:37 preserve 2:38 cheetah and reduce ecosystem loss or do 2:41 we need to think of something else 2:44 according to some of the modeling as 2:46 well as some of the empirical work that 2:47 has been done on documenting cheetah 2:49 declines 2:50 you can see that these declines are 2:52 quite precipitous 2:54 and this happens both inside as well as 2:56 outside protected areas 2:59 now this example raises some interesting 3:02 questions 3:03 like how did the cheetah become so 3:05 endangered 3:06 in the first place what processes took 3:09 place 3:10 in order for the cheetah to become 3:11 endangered were they persecuted by 3:13 humans 3:14 or are the other numbers being driven by 3:17 something else 3:18 what strategies can we use to reverse 3:21 the declines in cheetah populations 3:23 and perhaps more importantly what are 3:25 the implications of these strategies 3:28 in whatever solutions we want to try and 3:31 incorporate we have to think much more 3:33 carefully about who benefits 3:35 and who loses from these interventions 3:38 as that will help us 3:40 prepare for a more just and important 3:42 society 3:43 in which we can think about these 3:45 questions of inequality 3:47 poverty alongside biodiversity laws 3:51 our first question is how do we 3:53 understand environmental change 3:56 secondly we want to think a little bit 3:58 more about what is driving those changes 4:00 and what are the impacts of those 4:02 changes 4:03 third what can we do to ameliorate some 4:05 of these changes and in some cases 4:07 reverse them completely finally we're 4:11 going to 4:11 direct you to some further reading and 4:13 some resources to help improve your 4:15 understanding 4:16 of biodiversity loss and ecosystem 4:18 degradation 4:21 if we are going to do this effectively 4:23 we do need to start understanding 4:26 how we're going to think about 4:27 environmental change through different 4:30 ways and means of knowing and 4:32 understanding 4:34 first ecological second anthropological 4:38 third the environmental humanities and 4:40 fourth the geographical human 4:42 environment 4:43 these are just some of the ways in which 4:45 we can understand environmental change 4:47 it does not mean that these are the only 4:49 ways to understand environmental change 4:52 let's go through these one by one 4:56 the ecological is probably the one that 4:58 you're most familiar with 5:00 it's the study of organisms within their 5:02 habitat 5:03 and this includes both living as well as 5:05 non-living factors 5:09 it tends to be highly quantitative 5:11 relying on a lot of statistics and 5:13 models 5:14 and also on the scientific framework 5:17 also known as positivist ways of 5:19 thinking 5:20 it's often done in ecology and 5:22 evolutionary biology programs 5:24 but often also in environmental studies 5:27 programs 5:29 the target audience is varied but it 5:31 tends to be other scientists including 5:33 scientists 5:34 in academia in other universities around 5:36 the world 5:37 in government agencies and to some 5:39 extent policy makers 5:41 and at environmental ngos as well as 5:44 policy makers in the government as well 5:48 the anthropological way of thinking 5:50 about environmental change tends to 5:52 sit on the other side of the of the coin 5:54 if you will 5:55 and this is the study of human behavior 5:57 in societies both past 5:59 present and future what's very 6:02 interesting about the anthropological 6:03 perspective is that it helps us examine 6:06 how humans have adapted to environmental 6:08 change and how they modify those 6:10 environments resulting in the 6:11 environments that we have 6:14 it tends to be both qualitative and 6:16 quantitative 6:17 it relies on positivist as well as 6:19 post-structural ways of thinking 6:22 and it's often done in anthropology 6:24 departments and even some environmental 6:26 studies departments 6:29 the target audience tends to be more 6:31 social sciences 6:33 other social scientists including those 6:35 in sociology and other cognate 6:37 disciplines 6:38 as well as ngos and government agencies 6:41 it's a very powerful way by which we can 6:43 understand environmental change 6:45 the environmental humanities are 6:47 increasingly becoming a very popular way 6:50 by which we can understand environmental 6:52 change 6:53 this is the study of how humanistic 6:55 values ethics and meanings 6:57 are deployed to understand environmental 6:59 problems 7:01 it often bridges indigenous and other 7:03 forms of knowledge generation and 7:05 transmission 7:06 it's very broad methods and techniques 7:08 ranging from the qualitative to the 7:10 quantitative 7:11 and everything in between it's often 7:14 found in english 7:15 anthropology history geography and other 7:17 sociology departments 7:19 and this often takes the forms of books 7:21 but not exclusively 7:22 also podcasts you've probably 7:24 encountered the environmental humanities 7:26 in stories of environmental change 7:31 the target audience tends to be general 7:33 public as well as quite a bit in 7:34 academia 7:35 and there are quite a few books that i 7:37 can recommend that you have a look at 7:39 towards the end of this lecture 7:44 the one that i'm most familiar with is 7:46 the geographical human environmental 7:48 and this is the study of human 7:50 environment interactions in a spatial 7:52 perspective 7:53 that is we're interested in learning 7:55 about humans 7:56 are interacting with their environments 7:58 but across 7:59 different spaces and times 8:02 mobility is a key theme for example in 8:05 geographical human environmental studies 8:08 as well 8:09 it tends to bridge both the natural as 8:12 well as the social sciences 8:14 but in particular political economy 8:16 which we can think of as politics and 8:18 economics 8:19 and the environment together the methods 8:23 tend to be quite mixed relying on 8:25 qualitative quantitative 8:27 but especially incorporating quite a few 8:29 geospatial technologies 8:31 like satellite remote sensing global 8:34 positioning systems 8:35 and geographic information systems 8:39 it's often done in geography departments 8:41 but also in sociology 8:42 anthropology and other environmental 8:44 studies department 8:46 the target audience much like some of 8:48 the other ways in which we study 8:49 environmental change 8:51 tends to be quite broad reaching 8:53 academics policy makers 8:55 general public and other scientists and 8:57 ngos 8:58 as well as government agencies 9:02 for purposes of this lecture we're going 9:04 to try and focus on the geographical and 9:07 human environmental 9:08 and as i mentioned previously this is 9:11 bridging the relationships between 9:12 political economy and the environment 9:14 it's also sometimes known as political 9:16 ecology i have a reference for you at 9:18 the end of the lecture which i'm sure 9:20 you can easily look up let me know if 9:23 you have any questions about that