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February 17, 2023
Welcome to Season 5 of The Climate Conversation podcast! We are starting off with a discussion about biodiversity and conservation, especially how this work connects with climate change and the role of policymakers in addressing biodiversity loss. EESI’s Dan and Emma speak with Barbara Martinez, a National Geographic conservation biologist and a member of EESI’s Board of Directors. Barbara shares her thoughts on the role of science in the federal government, the outcomes of the recent U.N. biodiversity conference, COP15, in Canada, and how Congress can boost conservation solutions.
Show notes:
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello, and welcome to season five of The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Whether you're a longtime listener or you're just joining us for the first time, we're extremely excited to have you with us as we undertake this latest season. We're jumping into another season showcasing amazing climate solutions from across the country. And I'm joined for this first episode back with my longtime cohost, Emma Johnson. I wouldn't have it any other way. Happy to be on the mic with you once again, Emma.
Emma Johnson: Hi, Dan, and welcome listeners. I know that both Dan and I are really excited about this upcoming season and we're happy to have you all along the ride with us. We're going to be covering home electrification, climate adaptation, jobs, the circular economy and a lot more over these next few months. You won't want to miss an episode. So make sure you're subscribed to The Climate Conversation wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review while you're at it. Why not?
Dan: Why not indeed, it would be great. We're starting off the season by talking about a very important topic, and that is conservation. We spend a lot of time talking about the enormous challenge that is climate change and the climate crisis. But at the same time, there's another equally enormous and interconnected crisis going on too often gets less attention, and that is the global rapid pace of biodiversity loss.
Emma: Worldwide, more than one million species are at risk of extinction, from wetland plants that filter out water to the insects that keep our soil healthy to the birds that pollinate our trees. Biodiversity supports everything we do as humans, diverse, thriving plants and animals are also good for the climate as natural climate solutions like forests and wetlands can be a critical part of global emissions reductions. Millions of people depend on nature for their day to day livelihoods, and all of us depend on it for the land we live on food we eat and air we breathe.
Dan: One reason we wanted to begin this season with biodiversity loss is so that we could recap the outcomes of a critical international summit that took place in Canada in December 2022. Followers of EESI’s work know that we've put a ton of effort into following the events at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, which happened to have taken place in Egypt in November 2022. But the U.N. also puts on a similar international conference every two years focused specifically on biodiversity. And this December meeting was especially important because it was supposed to have happened in 2020, but was delayed two years because of the pandemic.
Emma: That's right, Dan countries came through in a major way, coming to a decision about a landmark agreement to guide global action on nature. This agreement, called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, aims to establish sustainable use and management of biodiversity, restore ecosystems and ensure that money flows from developed to developing countries for these projects. And it has some lofty targets including halving global food waste by 2030 and reducing the rate of extinction for all species tenfold by 2050. This conference was also an opportunity for Indigenous leaders to push for recognition of their rights as stewards of nature and have that included in the final text. We will talk more about the outcomes of this conference later in this episode.
Dan: Another reason why we're excited to cover conservation today is because we're joined by a conservation expert and EESI's newest board member, Barbara Martinez, who joined the team in July 2022. Barbara is the Director of Science for the land focus area at the National Geographic Society. She manages a portfolio of research and conservation projects and supports National Geographic Explorers, who are striving to eliminate and protect terrestrial and freshwater systems around the world. Prior to that Barbara was the open innovation director at Conservation X Labs where she built and implemented innovation challenges on a wide range of conservation topics. She also has a PhD in conservation biology, and an undergraduate degree in wildlife ecology. Barbara, welcome to the podcast.
Barbara Martinez: Thank you, Dan. It's really nice to be here.
Emma: Barbara, I want to start out just by saying it's really great to have you on EESI’s board. And as Dan mentioned, in your introduction, you have so much experience with advancing scientific research about our natural world. At EESI, we primarily work on the policy side of things focusing on congressional climate education. So I'm curious to hear from you, how do you see climate policy education and biodiversity research working together? And was this something that inspired you to want to be on our board in the first place?
Barbara: It's a great question. And I'm going to first start with the second question that you asked, was this something that inspired me to be on the board of EESI. And I'll say yes, and, what I really like and appreciate about EESI is the role that you play in Congressional science education, because as we all know, not all, or very few, Congress members have a PhD in any kind of scientific field. But a lot of these issues and topics related to climate change and biodiversity conservation, scientists are still studying these things and learning new information on a daily basis, and the volume of information, the volume of data, it takes a really good group like EESI to filter all of that scientific knowledge into something that is palatable, something that makes sense for the policymakers and for the decision makers. And so that's what I really like about your role is that you are able to filter the scientific information and you're able to present it in ways that make sense to the people who are making decisions for our country. I review, I read several science and conservation grants in my current role. And I would say that 90 percent of those grant applications have listed as one of their desired outcomes, or they list their key stakeholders as policymakers. A very small percentage of those applicants have a collaborator or they have a team member, or even a connection to one of those policymakers or decision makers. They don't have a really good relationship or even know who it is, from that audience of policymakers and decision makers, who's going to benefit from their scientific research. It's this huge gap. And I think that EESI does an excellent job of filling that gap here in the U.S.
So the first part of the question, so climate is related to biodiversity. And it's challenging, I think, to keep them separate when you're talking about climate change. Maybe an obvious or less appreciated contributor to that is the kingdoms of microbes. If you think about microbial biodiversity, these are organisms that both contribute to climate change, but they can also be harnessed and utilized to reverse climate change, because there are species of microbes that are producing oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, there are microbes that consume oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide. When you're talking about climate policy, education and biodiversity research, I think a great example of an addition to that curriculum is microbial biodiversity. I’m going to make a plug for a report that was recently published by the American Microbiological Society and the American Academy of Microbiology, and this report is called Microbes and Climate Change: Science, People and Impacts. And it's a very good report a great assessment of current and past research on microbial biodiversity and the role that they play in climate. They do make a great call to action, a request to include the role of microbes in climate models, because current models don't incorporate, as far as I know, they don't incorporate microbial contribution to climate.
Dan: So Barbara, you and I first met each other when we were serving on a selection committee for executive branch fellows for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. AAAS played a role in your career as well. And I'm curious, sort of what you see in terms of executive branch fellows, legislative fellows, what's it like to go through that experience? What's it like for a researcher, someone who's coming, you know, fresh out of a PhD program or something like that, to then get the kind of policy experience that AAAS fellowship offers?
Barbara: Thanks, Dan. It's a great question. And it absolutely shifted the direction of my career. I have a PhD in conservation biology, the research that I did, there were kind of hints of policy. I never formally took any kind of science policy or even policy government courses during graduate school. I kind of understood that there are these other forces that were impacting the type of research or the research and the conservation that I was hoping to do. My work was overseas, my work was in Madagascar. And there are these other forces that were at play. The protected area that I was working in was not designed by the people living there, they were informed, and they were kind of included in the process. But they weren't the ones who decided that this national park should be created and that they should move their farmlands outside of the park and move elsewhere and come up with alternative different livelihoods than what they were used to. So these were all kind of pressures that came from outside of the country and even outside, if they came from within the country, they came from outside of the region where people were living. And so I was very interested in the role of scientists, the role of science in conservation policy and environmental policy. When I finished my graduate degree I applied for AAAS, and I got it and I was very happy. And the first AAAS fellowship that I had was at the USGS, I was there for a year. And then I went to the EPA for my second year as a fellow. And it was an eye-opening experience. I didn't realize that there were so many scientists who worked for the federal government. And it's not something that I ever really, I was never in that environment to really know that. And then the role of science too: there's a lot of collaboration. And there's a lot of working across different disciplines, too, which is so necessary. There's just so much great and amazing work that is done behind the scenes in the executive branch in order to inform those people who are making decisions about policies. And that includes those people who are making decisions in the legislative branch, but also in the executive branch, the executive orders that come out, the programs and policies that are developed, so many of them are informed by scientists in the federal government. And they're either doing the science themselves, or they're working with universities and scientists across the world to gather that information and data. So it was absolutely eye opening, it changed the trajectory of my career. And it's also a very long-winded plug for those of you who are scientists and looking for interesting careers, I really recommend that AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship Program.
Dan: These days, your work on managing lands conservation and research project portfolios for National Geographic, I'm curious if you could share maybe a few examples of the projects that National Geographic has funded, especially those maybe around biodiversity and climate change, and what the explorers that you're working with are up to these days.
Barbara: Sure. So I do have to say that I am speaking during this podcast, not on behalf of National Geographic Society. This is me, Barbara Martinez, the conservation biologist and EESI Board Member, speaking for myself. And so I'm not going to talk about specific explorers by name, but I'll speak about generalities about some of their projects and some of the work, the portfolio that I manage. It's really very broad and multidisciplinary. So the National Geographic Society has five focus areas for research and conservation grants, and one of them is land. And so this is the one that I manage, and land includes freshwater. It also includes paleobiology and geology. It includes several climate-related and climate change projects, ecosystem level and community level projects. It's very broad. I think a couple of interesting examples of projects that we are currently funding are paleobiology as one that could really illuminate or give us information about how humans are going to thrive under predicted climate scenarios. There are a lot of scientists, including ones that we find who are examining the paleo records. So not just the charismatic, extinct species, but extinct mammals, insects, there's the pollen records, plants, all of these species and just understanding the climate of the past the species that existed during these timeframes. For example, what was the food availability for the major species that were alive at the time? Can they see when those food species dropped out of the fossil record? And when does that correlate to when those mammals or other species also dropped out of the climate record? What can be correlated with those observations? And what does that say about our current scenario and future scenarios? There's also some really fascinating work being done in understanding, so you can see the species that existed and when they existed in the sediment layers, but also what was the water availability, like, especially rainfall of the past. And so there are scientists who extract stalactites and stalagmites from caves, and they're able to analyze those stalactites and stalagmites. And because those rocks have recorded rainfall, you're able to see it seasonally and perhaps monthly back hundreds of thousands of years. And so that gives you a map of rainfall for a region depending on where these stalactites and stalagmites are collected from caves and that layer on top of the species that existed in the pollen in the plants. And then what are we expecting for that region based on our climate modeling provides us a lot of information about how can we adapt? How are we going to manage the scenario. There’re also several studies that are examining the reactions of ecosystems, assemblages of species, plants and animals and microbes to the current changing climate. So for example, what's happening in the wake of melting glaciers, what's happening to plants that are being warmed due to, obviously warmer climate. There are also several projects measuring carbon sequestration of reforestation efforts or of a forestation efforts. So how are these projects that are meant to mitigate for climate change? How are they actually contributing towards climate change?
Emma: Earlier in this episode, Dan, and I talk about the U.N. biodiversity conference that happened in late 2022 in Canada. So as part of that conference, there was a decision that countries agreed to that was about including a pledge to put 30 percent of the planet and 30 percent of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030. Can you talk about the significance of including this pledge in this decision? And how do you see this playing out in the U.S. as President Biden set the same target at the start of his presidency for the United States in particular.
Barbara: So I wasn't there, but reading the news articles about it, and talking to a couple of colleagues who did attend, the mood, the enthusiasm, that's very encouraging, right, and it's getting biodiversity conservation into the mainstream, people are talking about biodiversity conservation. Whether they agree or disagree with a 30 by 30 concept, they are talking about conservation. I think it's very significant that people are talking, there's news articles written about this, becoming more familiar to people. Of course, the challenging part here is the implementation of 30 by 30, on a global scale, and in the U.S., too, because committing to protect land and, and degraded lands too, there's different levels of protection, there's different kind of categories of protection and conservation. If it’s this top down, a government saying we're going to preserve this land over here, which it could be interpreted as this means that no one may access this land, this means that people need to be moved from it, or this means that perhaps some rights are taken from communities, that's not going to go over so well with people who live there, and who have been using that land. So it's a very high level agreement, right, 35,000 feet up, to say that we want to protect this much land in this period of time. The details, though, of what kind of protection is that? Who manages that land? How what does it mean to protect the land? How do you know if it's being protected? So we need to come up with metrics. And we need to come up with ways to measure those metrics in order to say that we are successfully and effectively managing and protecting this land and oceans. This takes a huge investment in not only communicating with the people and communities who live near and rely on these future protected areas, but a co creation, collaboration, bottom up approaches, and an understanding of what it means to manage and protect areas. What are the metrics? Who's going to measure them? How do we know when we're successful? I think another really key and exciting aspect of the U.N. target was the inclusion and a lot of talk about respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. I hope that this is also part of the U.S. is commitment and agreement. I think that it’s about time. And I also think it's just it's extremely necessary when we're talking about not only, if we're talking about protecting land that isn't currently protected, it is really important just from the start to include the people who live there, the local communities who live there and are interacting with that land, they need to understand what it means to them. How are they going to benefit? How are they going to be involved?
Dan: So speaking of the U.S.’s commitment to all of this, what kind of role do you think is in the works for Congress when it comes to addressing biodiversity loss? What would you like to see sort of policymakers focus on as they think about how to move us closer to where the goal would have us be in 2030?
Barbara: Yeah, there's some actions that Congress can take, and then their actions that the executive branch could take, and the states could take too, right. I don't think this all falls in the category of Congress must pass these laws. It doesn't all fall in their lap, but they can pave the way for some of these programs and these actions to better conserve biodiversity. I think that the Farm Bill and the Conservation Reserve Program and there are several programs in the Farm Bill that are related to land conservation, I think that those have been really successful in the past and continue to be successful. They're good programs because they're not punishing private landowners. It's more of the carrot approach. They're incentivizing private landowners, farmers, to remove land from production. And especially if it's not very productive land, this seems like a great option. I think that those programs, they're very effective. And so I would hope that they continue to move forward with those. I think that there's also opportunity here to target or focus on a couple of sectors that are industrial sectors. When I talk to experts, especially scientists who have been working in these fields for so long, so many of them express that it's like, we've done the science, we've tried implementing all of these programs. But we need policy changes. Like I don't have the specifics for those policy changes, because I think the scientists don't always know what those policy changes are. But it's kind of like we need there to be this legislative or policy landscape that provides incentives for us to implement our innovative solutions. There needs to be incentives for farmers to adopt different farming practices so that fewer nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, are released into our freshwater systems. And I think that there's this opportunity to interact with those scientists who want to share their science findings with policymakers to really understand okay, how can we turn this need into an incentive-based solution through Congress to solve this problem.
Emma: Looking ahead, Barbara, what do you think are the key issues that you think policymakers ought to be focusing on when we consider moving from the words, the actions, the 35,000 feet that you mentioned earlier, to actually implementing and making things happen? And I'm also curious if there's stuff you're hopeful about in terms of the future of conservation work?
Barbara: Yeah, thank you. Oh, I am hopeful. I mean, I have to be in this field of conservation. Depending on who you ask, some people might say it's a very depressing field. But it's also, it's not. It's not depressing, because I think that conservation biologists and ecologists and people that I fund now, are continuing to study and find out just fascinating things about our planet, and the species and the organisms and everything and how we interact with them. You know, what gives me hope is that people continue to be curious and interested and want to work towards reversing how we've destroyed things. People know that they are part of the solution, they are the solution. And I am hopeful that Congress plays a role in incentivizing people to be a part of those solutions. Right now I'm giving grants to fund, it's kind of, it's a bit of like, it's the basic research. It's like the NSF role the government plays as well. But the executive branch also has SBIR and STTR funds, which are great, and I hope that they continue and more funding towards those programs would also be awesome, because it's really taking the science, it's the SBIR funds and STTR is taking that science and applying it to solutions. There's also plenty of science that is funded by NSF, and by National Geographic and several other foundations, corporate funders, too. There's a lot of science that doesn't get translated and doesn't get shared with the policymakers and decision makers. And so I'm hopeful that there's more opportunity for that to become translated and shared. I think that the work of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES, there are these organizations, these entities that are helping to bridge that gap between the scientific information and specific to biodiversity conservation, and providing the information to policymakers to so they also give me hope, along with EESI.
Dan: Well, I was just going to say, Barbara, thank you for that. That's a great place actually to end and on a hopeful note, and on the note full of can-do spirit, probably why you fit so well on EESI 's Board of Directors, because those are two qualities that our folks have, which is which is really great. Thank you so much for joining us today. I love listening to scientists talk about their work. It's super cool. And congratulations again on all the cool stuff you've got going on at National Geographic.
Barbara: Thank you. Thanks. It's been really great to talk to both of you.
Dan: Well, that was a real treat getting to talk with Barbara. Barbara joined our Board middle of last year and has been a really great contributor and supporter and booster and also just a very interesting person to get to know and to talk to so super cool that she joined us. One thing I was thinking about when I was listening to Barbara was I was reminded, and we talked a little bit about our work with the U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP, most recent one was COP27. The year before, we included a briefing in our pre-COP congressional briefings that featured Sir Robert Watson and Christiana Figueres. And that was specifically talking about the Making Peace with Nature report that came out earlier in 2021. And I was remembering, reading that report and finding it super, super interesting. And I'm really glad that we use this podcast and specifically the season opener to kind of go back and look at biodiversity loss and talk about that issue. I think it's really important. And there's a lot to cover when it comes to climate change education. And I'm glad we were spending a little bit of time talking about that, because it's really, really important. And of course, as Barbara pointed out, it's extremely interconnected.
Emma: Definitely, I really agree, Dan. And we spend a lot of time at EESI, talking about natural climate solutions. And we put in an extra emphasis around COP27, the U.N. Climate Change Conference this year into talking about this connection between climate change and biodiversity. So we'll have a couple resources on that linked to in the show notes and really hoping to continue thinking about how these two issues relate to each other and what we can continue to do in our briefings, in our articles and in our other materials to highlight the connections and the solutions that are available to both these crises. So yeah, it was great to start off this season with Barbara and hear about her experience on our board and with our resources and her experience as this scientist as well with this wealth of knowledge on conservation issues. So if you want to learn more about EESI work related to conservation, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions, go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
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