[MUSIC] We've been examining what happens, when a growing world economy collides

against
planetary boundaries. We have a world output now, of 80 to $90
trillion, 7.2 billion people. We know that the numbers are continuing to
rise. We know that the world economy is
continuing to grow at three to 4% per year, meaning a doubling, every
20 years or so. We know, that there are already huge
pressures on the world's ecosystems, on the climate, on
the oceans. And we have not yet found a way of course, to reconcile that continuing
growth, with environmental sustainability. We've studied a few ways that this,
collision or this trespass of planetary boundaries is occurring,
climate change being the most dramatic. Pollution of the air and water and the
dangers to our cities being another. I want to go into greater depth now, on
the question of the viability of other species, the
biodiversity on the planet. I've mentioned several times, that
humanity is putting so much pressure on the Earth, that we're actually causing a
dramatic increase in the rate of species
extinction. Maybe 100 to a 1000 times, greater rate of species extinction, than was
occurring
before the the industrial revolution. That loss of species and many other
phenomena associated with it, such as the decline of
genetic diversity within species. The decline of abundance of species, even
when they're not being pushed to extinction, but just to
smaller and smaller numbers. That combined effect is so large, that it
is causing what could be the sixth great
extinction on the planet, as I've discussed, and it is causing huge threats
to humanity. As always, whether it's with climate
change, or dangers to our cities, or challenges of health and education, first we
need to understand, what's
happening? Why is it happening? What are the mechanisms? We have to do a
differential diagnosis of
the losses to biodiversity, and to the rising rates
of species extinction. Then we have to analyze, what we can do about it, what's the
prescription, what
are the possible approaches? Now, there's one overriding truth to this
sixth wave of extinctions and to the threats to
biodiversity. And that is, that the threats are coming
from many, many different angles, as is true in
almost everything we're studying. We're dealing with a complex system, where
there's not a linear effect from a single cause to a single outcome, and
then onto another effect. There are multiple stressors, multiple
drivers of environmental change, multiple causes of species extinction or decline
of
abundance and genetic diversity. We need to understand the complexity of
this system because no single approach is going to be sufficient to [COUGH]
reversing the trends that are underway. Heading off this sixth great extinction
that is a threat, to not only millions of other species, but
to one that we also have a especially strong vested interest in, and
that's Homo sapiens, that's us. And so we need to get into the very
complex nature of this threat. You're looking at an example of
biodiversity, the incredible diversity of species and interactions in this marine
environment that you're viewing right now. And of course, what you see are multiple
species of animals and plant life. Many species are microscopic, and you
don't see them. You see the interactions of the fish, corals, and we know the
microscopic
plankton for example in the oceans, with the
non-living part of the system in front of you, the fluxes of
energy, of sunlight of nutrients that are arriving in this ecosystem from a variety
of sources. What is an ecosystem? It is exactly that collection, of plants
and animals and microbial life, interacting with the
abiotic or nonliving part of the local system, with
the energy and nutrient fluxes. The key is that this is a set of living organisms
together with the
non-living environment. Interacting in a system and of course,
what ecologists do in studying ecosystems, is study the
fluxes and dynamics of the system. How does nutrient flow take place within a food
web and within the processes of
metabolism. Of, oxidation, respiration, [COUGH] and,
photosynthesis, and other basic processes of, the metabolism of the living
organisms, within the system. How does the diversity of the, species and
the diversity of the individual organisms within a species, affect the
behavior of that whole ecosystem? So when we have an ecosystem, we're also
interested in another core concept. And that is the biological diversity or
biodiversity of that ecosystem. And of the biodiversity across ecosystems,
as ecosystems, marine, and terrestrial,
interact with each other, to produce outcomes, at an even higher level, of
aggregation and organization. So what is bio-diversity? Bio-diversity is the
variability of life,
and it is variability that occurs at all
different levels of organization. We care about the variability of life
within a species, each of us is different from from
other people. We have different genetic codes. We carry different effects of our
[COUGH]
our environment. We know that the relationship of environment and genetics, is
extremely
complicated. We found out that it's even more
complicated than we thought, through the emerging field of epi-genetics, which
tells us that the environment affects, how our genes code or don't code, in ways
that
actually can transmit across generations. Even not in the DNA itself, but in the
way
that that DNA is expressed in cells from a parental
generation to offspring. So, we care about the variation, within a
species. We care about the interaction across
species. All of the various relationships of
predator and prey, and mutualism, and parasitism, and the ways that species
interact, and and live together and are part of, larger food
chains and nutrient fluxes. And a part of the way that, the disease is
pathogens, transmit within an ecosystem. And we care about the biological diversity
across ecosystems. Because the interaction of ecosystems, of
dry land ecosystems, or desert ecosystems, interacting with the humid ecosystems,
with alpine or
marine ecosystems, is also absolutely crucial for
understanding, how any of those individual ecosystems
functions, but also understanding the global functioning of the, the earth
as a whole. What happens in the oceans or what happens
in the polar regions or what happens in the rain
forests, affects global dynamics of heat dissipation, of the water cycle,
and through multiple processes, affects ecosystems all
over the world. So there are distant relationships between changes in the pole-ward
regions, for
example. And what happens even in the tropics or,
or places that are thousands and thousands of
kilometers, distant. So, biological diversity or biodiversity,
requires us to understand the variation of life, at all
different levels of organization, and to understand how
that variability affects the performance of
ecosystems, in ways that matter. One of the most important studies that was
done, in recent decades in fact, on the
functioning of ecosystems, was a major global effort
[COUGH] which reported in the year 2005, called the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment. It took a global view of the major
ecosystems in the world, and tried to give a conceptual framing, of
how they're functioning, how they're interacting and
what they mean for humanity. And one of the important schematic ideas
that came out of the millennium ecosystem assessment is, this
chart, that you're looking at right now. The idea of this chart is to define, how
ecosystems affect human well-being. That's not the only thing we care about
ecosystems, but it's a pretty
important part. And you see on the left, various categories of ecosystem services,
so-called. Ecosystem services are the benefits, that
ecosystems give to humanity, and to other species, I would
like to add. And those benefits come in a variety of
forms. Partly, ecosystems directly provide for
human needs. Provisioning services, growing food,
providing fresh water. providing, wood and fiber for building
structures, for our clothing. Providing biomass for our fuels. So, provisioning is
one direct and obvious
category. A bit less, direct, but absolutely profound, is the idea of
regulatory ecosystem services. Ecosystems control basic climate patterns,
disease patterns cycling of crucial nutrients, in ways that
are of fundamental importance to humanity. Even if they're not directly the
provisions of things, that we eat or directly
consume. So for example, ecosystems in their functioning, have huge effects on
climate
regulation. If, the pole-ward Nordic and Arctic ecosystems are heavily changed by
climate warming, then
we're also going to get powerful feedbacks that could be o, of
tremendous adverse consequence. For example, the melting of the great ice
sheets. Or the decline of ice covering the seas,
changing the reflectance of the planet and providing a massive feedback, amplifying
climate change, coming from
greenhouse gasses. Or, the melting of ice in the Tundra,
releasing massive amounts potentially, of methane or carbon
dioxide, in a feedback mechanism. So, ecosystems provide regulatory
services, either helping to sustain a climate in a safe zone, or if these
ecosystems get perturbed, amplifying
adverse changes that are coming from other factors, such as
greenhouse gas concentrations. Flood regulation is the second kind of
ecosystem service. Coastal areas are often protected by the
mangrove swamps just off the coast or by other
topographical features of ecosystems, and if those get perturbed, if
those are lost by human-induced changes, that can
lead to great dangers. The coastal areas around New Orleans, for
example, were degraded by the ways that human
activity led to changes of the dynamics of the
Mississippi River, as it flows into the Gulf of
Mexico. And the loss of those coastal barriers
meant, that when Hurricane Katrina slammed the
Gulf of Mexico, this added tremendous force and
damage, to New Orleans and to the rest of the
coastline. And so, the loss of coastal regulatory protection because of human
activity,
clearing mangrove swamps or changing river flow dynamics,
had a hugely consequential and adverse effect
for humanity. Ecosystems regulate disease and pests, and
when ecosystems are degraded, pests or invasive species,that is species that
have been brought in by accident or even inadvertently, from outside a particular
place and maybe don't have natural predators
within that new environment, can spread, can take
over, can be essentially like wild weeds or spreading parasites, with
devastating consequences to food production, for example, or to human
health. The ecosystems for instance, the wetlands
which are a major part of the water cycle help to provide fresh water help to
replenish ground water. Vital for household use or for crop
production. When ecosystems are deranged, we can lose
water services needed to grow food and needed for human
health. Ecosystems have a third category called supportive ecosystem services
[COUGH] you
see here. Nutrient cycling or the way that soils are formed, through the
interaction of biotic
and abiotic processes. And soil formation then, is a crucial underpinning of
course, of our
agricultural productivity. And finally, the millennium ecosystem
assessment identified cultural features, which are our values,
our aesthetics. One of the, greatest scientists, of our
age, E.O. Wilson, the great biologist at
Harvard University, one of the leaders in understanding biodiversity
and one of the leaders in understanding human nature, in,
in our world, has given the idea that, humanity has a
deeply ingrained love of bio-diversity. That we even inherited as part of our, our,
our mental baggage during human
evolution. A trait that he calls biofelia or love of
of a diverse of a biology and the, the bioda,
and our biodiversity. And Professor Wilson has given extensive compelling evidence
from the range of
anthropological studies for example, of how humanity feels
at home, in certain natural environments. And how the degradation or derangement of
those natural environments can deeply
upset our cultures, our mental well being our sense of aesthetics, our overall
quality of
life. Well, those ecosystem services, translate
into many dimensions of human well-being, our
physical security, the materials that we need for life, our human, physical and
mental
health. Our ability to interact fruitfully in
society, in other words, there are contributors to our social
capital, and to the preservation of social relations and as the millennium
ecosystem assessment emphasized, they contribute to our freedom, our
capability to accomplish our life's tasks. So, ecosystem services are central, they
are a threat because they are such core, dimensions to our human well being, we now
have to turn
to the question of, how biodiversity contributes to the
functioning of ecosystems, and what happens when
biodiversity is put at great threat, by human activity. That's our next subject.