AAAS Symposium
Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures
February 12-16, 2009 - Chicago, IL
"Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World: Science-based strategy for the 21st Century"
*On Sunday, Feb. 15 NCSE presented the findings of the 9th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment to the participants at the AAAS Meeting. Presentations and details below. You may stream the presentation using the media player above.*
Synopsis:
Since the 1986 National Forum on Biodiversity, biodiversity research, education and conservation have advanced, but biodiversity itself is significantly diminished and much more precarious today. We look broadly at scientific discoveries and issues involving the evolutionary and ecological roles, use, abuse and conservation of biodiversity including cultivated and wild species and ecosystems. We will look at how biodiversity is being affected by global climatic disruption, globalization, changing patterns of resource use, and other rapid changes. These changes affect fundamental evolutionary processes, and pose challenges to traditional applications of conservation science such as protected areas, invasive species control, endangered species recovery and captive breeding. The impacts on humans through reductions on ecosystem services, loss of crop varieties and other species, as well as increases in some disease organisms are not well understood. This symposium builds on the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE)’s 9th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment: Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World. Speakers from the conference will present a strategy developed by scientists, conservationists and policymakers to expand scientific and public understanding of biodiversity and the applications of science to decisionmaking for conservation and management. All will have an opportunity to provide feedback and discuss next steps.
Organized by:
David E Blockstein, National Council for Science and the Environment, Washington, DC; Nicole Buell, National Council for Science and the Environment, Washington, DC
Presentations:
About the Speakers:
David Blockstein- Dr. Blockstein joined the National Council for Science and the Environment in 1990 and was its first Executive Director. Presently, he organizes NCSE's annual National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment. Dr. Blockstein also serves as Executive Secretary of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD). CEDD, formed in 2001, is the professional organization for the nation's deans of colleges of environment and natural resources and directors of institutes for environmental studies. As the 1987-88 Congressional Science Fellow of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and American Society of Zoology, Dr. Blockstein worked with the House of Representatives Environment Subcommittee of the Science Committee to prepare the National Biological Diversity Conservation and Environmental Research Act. Dr. Blockstein has a B.S. in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin and a M.S. and Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Minnesota.
Hans Herrmann- Hans Herrmann is a Mexican marine ecologist with over 22 years experience in the field of biodiversity conservation and natural resource policy. Before joining the Commission for Environmental Cooperation as the Head of the Biodiversity Conservation Program, he was the General Director of Pronatura Nacional for 8 years, the largest non governmental organization devoted to the conservation of biodiversity in Mexico. Prior to that, Hans was the Science Director at the Scientific Research Center of Quintana Roo (CIQRO) in the Yucatan Peninsula and his main responsibility was the management and coordination of scientific research in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve.
Peter Crane- Professor Crane, the John and Marion Sullivan University Professor at The University of Chicago, is known internationally for his work on the diversity of plant life – its origin and fossil history, its current status, and its conservation and use. Peter Crane received his BSc and PhD degrees in botany from the University of Reading, UK. He joined the Field Museum in Chicago in 1982 serving at the Director from 1992 to 1999 with overall responsibility for the Museum’s scientific programmes, and established the Office of Environmental Programs and the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change. Peter Crane became the Director of The Royal Botanic Gardens in 1999, one of the largest, most prestigious and influential botanical gardens in the world. Professor Crane is also the Chair of the US National Committee of DIVERSITAS, which held an major conference on biodiversity and its value immediately prior to the AAAS meeting.
John Wiens- Dr. Wiens, grew up in Oklahoma as an avid birdwatcher. Following degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S., Ph.D.), he joined the faculty of Oregon State University and, subsequently, the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University, where he was a Professor of Ecology and University Distinguished Professor. His work has emphasized landscape ecology and the ecology of birds, leading to over 200 scientific papers and 7 books. John left academia in 2002 to join The Nature Conservancy as Lead Scientist, with the challenge of putting years of classroom teaching and research into conservation practice in the real world. In 2008, he joined PRBO Conservation Science as Chief Conservation Science Officer.
Jane Elder- Ms. Elder is the principal of Jane Elder Strategies, based in Madison, Wisconsin, an organization that helps advance positive social and environmental change. Before the creation of Jane Elder Strategies, Elder was the founding director of Biodiversity Project, which has conducted public opinion research and shaped communication strategies for biodiversity, and received the 2002 Bay Foundation Biodiversity Leadership Award. Elder has headed the Midwest office of the Sierra club serving as National Director of Ecoregion Programs, and founding Sierra Club’s Great Lakes Program. She holds a B.A. in Communications from Michigan State University, and an M.S. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin.
George Rabb- Dr. Rabb is is the President Emeritus of the Chicago Zoological Society and served as Brookfield Zoo’s director from 1976 until 2003. Rabb’s pioneering work led the zoo towards its current position as a conservation center, a concept Rabb has championed for zoos everywhere. Rabb received both master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his bachelor’s degree from the College of Charleston, South Carolina. For seven years (1989-1996), Dr. Rabb served as chair of the Species Survival Commission of IUCN and is still active in its endeavors, especially with regard to the amphibians. Rabb helped found and is still active in Chicago Wilderness, a multi-organizational consortium to maintain the exceptional biological diversity of the metropolitan region, and served as President of Chicago Wilderness Magazine until 2008.
Presentation Summaries:
Jane Elder, President of Jane Elder Strategies, LLC, spoke about making our connection to Life on Earth in her presentation on Communicating Biodiversity. She touched on the reasons why we need to communicate, from building literacy, concern and the motivation to act, to laying the foundations for deeper wisdom to chart the strategies for sustainable living in a time of rapid ecological change. She gave a quick overview of social change communications approaches: framing, values-based communications, story-based approaches and social marketing. Then, she described biodiversity communications as “fragmented, bad news from people we don’t know” to illustrate the limits to current frames and messengers. She urged getting biodiversity out of the “science box” and avoiding heavy reliance on catastrophic and depressing frames and utilitarian rationales for conservation. Other tips included describing biodiversity as “life on earth” and defining solutions. She highlighted recommendations from the NCSE conference on biodiversity. These were summarized under these main ideas: build our capacity to connect with the public, to educate and communicate; create the context for learning in the classroom but also in society; and foster connections with life.
George Rabb: Many good points have been made by the participants in this session, but because of time constraints, I will comment only on what I regard as especially important aspects of our considerations of a science-based strategy for the 21st century in respect to biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. As noted at the December NCSE conference on Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World, a renewal of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in the fashion of the IPCC will do little good in improving the prospects for the survival of biological diversity if we do not also launch a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior. Such a call was well made by Paul Ehrlich and Robert Kennedy in 2005, and renewed in 2008 by James Fowler and Darren Schreiber, and will be further amplified by David Barash, all commenting in the journal SCIENCE. In this regard, I am pleased to note that a significant forward step in understanding human behavior in relation to the natural world is the very first text on conservation psychology, by Susan Clayton and Gene Myers, in press now at Wiley-Blackwell. This publication is a very comprehensive and caring work.
In respect to a primary outcome from the December NCSE conference, the conception of an Alliance for Life on Earth, as forwarded by Jane Elder and here by David Blockstein, it is very important to think of having Nature adequately represented at the decision-making tables of communities, nations, regions, and the world. Such an approach to help secure and restore biodiversity and its ecosystems has been the work of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund here in the U. S., and the CELDF recently helped to get such provisions for the rights of nature into the new constitution of Ecuador. In line with this approach, I suggest that part of the movement for an Alliance for Life on Earth will have to be a Charter for Life, a parallel to the Earth Charter, but framed from Nature’s standpoint.
In the presentations here at this AAAS meeting, John Wiens brought out the problematic situations of the many conservation-reliant species and of the fixed boundaries of protected areas for biodiversity, especially in the face of anthropogenic climate change. A means to counter these situations may come through the formation of America’s Living Trust as proposed by Jane Elder. This concept is already exemplified in regional alliances such as the Malpai Borderlands Group and here in the Chicago Wilderness, a consortium of 239 institutions, organizations, and governmental agencies and a corporate council that is committed to maintaining and restoring native biodiversity from Wisconsin to the tip of Michigan. Another counter to the continuing diminishment of biodiversity in our country could be in the formation of a federal Department of the Environment, bringing together all governmental units with direct responsibilities for the welfare of the environment and its natural resources, now the charge of several agencies in three federal departments and a major independent agency (USDA, USDI, USDC and EPA). In addition, environmental activities of the Department of State and the Department of Defense could be brought into coherence with a national policy mandate to maintain and restore biological diversity and its ecosystemic assemblages, and to provide for its survival in a changing world. And all agencies concerned with environmental relations and management should be made accountable by at least the equivalent of the IRS Form 990 annual report now required of non-profit organizations and by other assessments of the efficacy of their programs for sustainable maintenance of native biological diversity in our country and around the world.
In closing, as former Vice-president Albert Gore said at this AAAS meeting and as Jane Elder has ably outlined in this session, if scientists are to affect national policy on biodiversity, then it is imperative that scientists must get out of the scientific box and communicate much more widely and effectively to all peoples at all levels about what we know and what we can do for the conservation of nature. Considering that the world is entering upon the sixth mass extinction episode in the history of life on this planet, I hope all at this session will so care and so act.
Questions about the Symposium? Contact: David Blockstein, david@ncseonline.org or Nicole Buell, nbuell@ncseonline.org
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