Interview with Smithsonian's Thomas E. Lovejoy

How Biodiversity Can Help Save the Planet

Thomas E. Lovejoy is the leading scientist for biological diversity and environmental matters at the Smithsonian Institution. A tropical and conservation biologist who earned a B.S. and Ph.D. in biology from Yale University, Lovejoy has served as adviser to three presidents - Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton - helping to connect science and policy. Lovejoy's extensive work in the Amazon of Brazil focused public attention on the plight of tropical forests, and he is an internationally recognized expert in the conservation of biological diversity. He founded the public television series "Nature," and originated the "debt-for-nature" concept of swapping international debt for conservation projects while he was at the World Wildlife Fund.

Lovejoy served as an adviser in the creation of the National Biological Survey, now the National Biological Service. He is the author of many articles, and has written or edited four books, including "Key Environments: Amazonia" and "Global Warming and Biological Diversity." California Biodiversity News Editor Chris Chrystal interviewed Lovejoy in his office in the Smithsonian castle in Washington, D.C.

Q: The Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program is recognized as a successful program for conserving habitat and accommodating compatible economic development in Southern California. What do you see as its potential for the rest of the nation?
A: It is showing that it is workable. If you can do it in Southern California where the pressures are so great, it suggests very strongly that it could be useful elsewhere. My own view is that it is an absolutely essential part of ecosystem management that I am advocating almost everywhere. NCCP is the best demonstration of what needs to be done to provide habitat conditions that will enable species to move around.

Q: There are scientists working on plans to reconnect the landscape by linking habitat on large scales around the world. What are the prospects for accomplishing these links, realistically?
A: I don't know whether you can do it entirely, but you can do a lot of it. You can achieve it by doing NCCP programs piece by piece, which adds up. We need to have people living in a natural landscape instead of having little smidgens of nature surviving in human-dominated landscapes.

Bio.di.versity - diversity, or variety, in the living things in a particular area or region. - Webster's New World Dictionary

Q: You originated the debt-for-nature concept of swapping international debt for conservation projects. These kinds of economic incentive programs can save habitat that taxpayers can't afford to buy. How does it work?
A: For example, there was a $23 million debt swap between Canada and Costa Rica and its National Institute for Biodiversity, which is conducting a biological survey. Costa Rica's part of the deal was to set up the equivalent of a $23 million endowment for the institute. In Ecuador, a debt swap was used to create an endowment that doubled the budget of the (Equadoran) national park service. This program could apply to NCCP, but generally, this country has not yet figured out ways to do things internally that are done across borders. Until now, it's been essentially an international exercise that we have done on a nation-to-nation basis.

Q: Why don't decision-makers do more to help avert the alarming signs of global warming? Is any important progress being made? Are there encouraging trends?
A: Ninety-five percent of the world's experts on climate believe there is a problem with global warming. I think the problem in doing something about it is only partially decision-makers who "don't get it." I think a large part of the problem is that the public doesn't get it. They mostly don't get it about biodiversity either. Almost nobody realizes how many times a day their lives are touched beneficially by molecules from nature, and they certainly have no sense that a changing climate, even a naturally changing climate, is going to create a biotic disaster, given the way we manage our landscapes.

Q: How long do we have before this catastrophe begins to manifest itself?
A: Some people say it has already started, but you can't really say that because the record is too short. There are accumulated signs, like cracks in the Antarctic ice sheet and incidents of violent storms, that are pointing in the same direction. When you're dealing with something that is essentially gambling with the whole planet, you don't wait for all the evidence to be in before you do something. By the time we have actual global warming going on, it will be too late to stop it. It can be reversed, but it takes centuries, so it's not meaningful in terms of current human lifetimes.

Q: Are we starting to see signs of biotic disasters now?
A: I think the major biotic disasters going on are habitat destruction in various parts of the world - the rain forests, and a whole array of habitats. We have a lengthening list of endangered species. Imagine what Southern California would have looked like 10 years from now if NCCP hadn't been created. Landscapes that are managed with biodiversity in isolated fragments cannot respond to climate change, so it will be "bye-bye" for a lot of biodiversity.

Q: Will there come a time when it is too late to save the planet?
A: The planet is going to be just fine. It's the biodiversity that will be in trouble. Two things need to be done. We have to come to grips with the emission of greenhouse gases, and we must use our landscapes differently, restoring connections so species can move around. Even if we avert a lot of human-driven climate change, there will be natural climate change. As long as biodiversity is locked up in isolated fragments, it's a sitting duck, to use a biological metaphor. NCCP deals with that. It restores the connections, so it is extremely relevant.

Q: Are there encouraging signs in the face of global warming and all of the destruction?
A: Sure. All you have to do is look back for 25 years to see how much we have learned and how much we have progressed. It's reason to rejoice, but not to relax. We've done most of the easier stuff; it's the harder stuff, which relates to land use, that lies ahead.

Q: Species have been coming and going for thousands of years. To what extent is extinction part of a natural order that would occur without human interference?
A: The proportion of endangered species that are naturally endangered is trivial compared to the total, so the odds are that the endangerment of a species is human-driven. There are probably good arguments for protecting those that are naturally headed toward extinction because they are unique end points at 3.5 billion years of evolution. People say, "Dinosaurs went extinct. Would we have wanted to save the dinosaurs too?" Well, the truth is, anybody who had a live dinosaur (today) would be in a grand position.

Q: So we really can't afford to lose a single species?
A: Rather than thinking that some are expendable, it's more important to think of each one as representing a significant loss.

Q: The economics of preserving listed species is part of the debate, and some contend that human needs, such as jobs and livelihoods, should come first, and that biodiversity is simply a subordinate issue. Please comment.
A: That way of looking at it is arrogant and ill-informed. I am not saying people aren't important. I'm saying that, first of all, people benefit from the natural world, and jobs of the future will be based even more on biological resources than they have in the past. It is idiotic to pull the biological rug out from under the potential that biotechnology is opening for biological resources to confer benefit. Secondly, the way those statements are normally phrased assumes that the kind of jobs a person has should never change. That's sort of like arguing we still should have a lot of people in the horseshoe industry. Things change. It is also important to cushion transition. If we wait until a species has to be listed, there will always be a vested set of economic interests facing off against some organism nobody has ever heard of and the press finds it easy to make fun of. But that's not what the issue is really about. The issue is about biological diversity in support of human society.

Q: Do we base preservation decisions too heavily on economics? Realistically, how should their value be measured?
A: The problem with economics is that, largely as practiced, it does not recognize long-term values. So you have to find ways to frame the economic system to encourage that, and there are creative things you can do economically, such as trading conservation credits.

Q: Like the conservation banking system that we have set up in California?
A: Yes, and like buying up the development rights of agricultural land to take development pressure off.

Q: What can environmental groups do to improve their message?
A: Two things. They really should educate people in a sensitive way, not a Messianic way. All of us should spend less time talking to ourselves and more time talking to other, ordinary people. They also should make democracy work for them by seeing that they and others let their elected officials know that these things are important to them. People elect officials to represent their point of view. If these officials aren't doing it, they can be voted out. People should get engaged in environmental organizations and make a difference.

Q: California is the nation's leading farming state. What is agriculture's responsibility in conserving biodiversity?
A: Aside from habitat protection, the major responsibility of agriculture is to protect the quality of runoff from irrigation. Pesticides and fertilizers are changing the chemistry of water runoff that other people will use, and will also effect wild species. There are ways to enrich nitrogen in the soil without putting out fertilizer. I'm not saying you can transform these practices overnight or that there are perfect substitutes for everything, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Q: Some scientists say that the earth has more biodiversity today than ever before, yet others say we are slipping into an era of extinction that will claim up to half of all species in 40 years. Is extinction happening faster than the generation of new species?
A: Absolutely. The length of time it took for biodiversity to return to the level it was before the extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs went extinct is more than 10 times the length of the history of our own species. The rate of creation of new species compared to current extinction rates and what species mean in daily human lives is trivial, hardly worth calculating.