Wildlife, biodiversity and climate
A habitable climate depends on wildlife and biodiversity, because:
- Climate is a consequence of biodiversity and biodiversity is everything that ecosystems represent to life on Earth;
- A stable climate and therefore, a habitable Earth, depends on stabilising ecosystems; and
- Animals are the only mechanism that can do that.
As wildlife declines, we are breaking down biodiversity structure and losing energy (in the form of carbon) out of food chains and into the atmosphere and ocean. This way, climate and our food security are inextricably linked. We’re not only stripping soils of the material needed to feed us, we’re also introducing chaotic free energy into our atmosphere and causing huge fluctuations in the weather. The latter makes it harder for us to know when, where and how to feed ourselves.
Climate change: fossil fuels v. wildlife
Climate change has always been the symptom of biodiversity loss … that’s to say, the breakdown of the complex connectivity between lifeforms that allows Earth to flex in response to changing conditions.
Only recently have we created artificial climate change by mining carbon buried deep underground by animals millions of years ago. The animals that did that are no longer around and today’s animals, that would be busy moderating modern-day carbon, have populations that are heavily depleted.
We cannot engineer our way out of this crisis. We can only rebuild ecosystems rich in a diversity of animal life.
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
In the last few days, three people have separately sent me this new climate paper Schmitz et al. (2023), just published in the journal Nature [1]. Like the study I referred to the other day on marine animals, the authors identify a suite of mechanisms by which animals function in ecosystems.
This latest paper is, in this case, only looking at the role of wildlife in tackling carbon uptake. Remember, carbon is the basis for all life on Earth. When carbon is absorbed into food chains, it becomes connected to our survival.
Food, clean water, stable climate though, are actually by-products of our existence. As I explain in my book ‘Wildlife in the Balance‘ (buy it here if you’d like to read more), we are part and parcel of ecosystems. Ecosystems are our reason for being and we couldn’t exist, if they weren’t stable. They nourish us and we build them in equal measure, in order to create a habitable system, alongside all other animals.
Schmitz et al. therefore rightly argue that carbon uptake is far greater when animals are factored into habitat restoration. They say that carbon storage increases 4-5 times when animals are factored in, compared to 3.5-4 times for just trees.
But of course it’s more than that. The difference between those two figures is also the difference between a world that is habitable and one that is not. The imperative to save and restore wildlife is simply existential. This lends even greater support to the idea that wildlife is key to addressing almost all our environmental problems today, including climate change.
Trees aren’t ecosystems without wildlife. Ecosystems, in as much as they provide life-support, couldn’t even exist without wildlife. Stable climate is in actual fact the end-point of having water and food security – a point still largely overlooked in the scientific narrative.
Animals are humanity’s best hope
Nonetheless, it’s great to start hearing the importance of wildlife becoming a more mainstream idea among scientists. This critical understanding is still, as the authors point out, missing from global policy.
So, they are outstandingly correct when they say a change in mindset is needed – this change in values is the very first thing that has to happen before we can move to creating real and lasting environmental outcomes for humanity.
Currently we see animals as ‘the icing on the cake’, which as the authors point out, leads to ‘the separate allocation of landscape and seascape space for animal conservation and natural climate solutions because it sees them as competing objectives.’ At no level are we in competition with animals.
As in the subtitle of my book, ‘animals are humanity’s best hope.’ We must surround ourselves with a rich diversity of abundant wildlife if we are to have a future. Even a few of the greatest examples could save most of our planet’s ecosystems.
Read the paper here
Reference
- Schmitz, Oswald & Sylvén, Magnus & Atwood, Trisha & Bakker, Elisabeth & Berzaghi, Fabio & Brodie, Jedediah & Cromsigt, Joris & Davies, Andrew & Leroux, Shawn & Schepers, Frans & Smith, Felisa & Stark, Sari & Svenning, Jens-Christian & Tilker, Andrew & Ylänne, Henni. (2023). Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions. Nature Climate Change. 10.1038/s41558-023-01631-6.
