A better world is a question of more sustainable relations between individuals, communities, and ecosystems, and how these relations are structured and governed. Yet, our focus often gravitates towards images rather than these foundational questions. Particularly for understanding social-ecological systems, visual representations and images play a crucial role. How can we bring the two together?
You are cordially invited to view an innovative art exhibition by Leuphana’s Social-Ecological Systems Institute (SESI, School of Sustainability), demonstrating how art serves as a powerful tool for comprehending sustainability challenges and devising effective solutions. This exhibition offers a glimpse into the diverse work of Leuphana’s SESI in different parts of the world via various types of photography and artwork. Visitors will be able to experience how social-ecological systems thinking can contribute valuable solutions towards sustainable and just futures. If you’re interested in social-ecological systems, this is the perfect place to get inspiration and knowledge on the wide range of topics covered at SESI.
Open exhibition | 6-20 June 2024, in the foyer of Leuphana’s library.
Opening ceremony | 6 June 2024, 1 pm with light refreshments
Closing ceremony | 20 June 2024, 3.30 pm with light refreshments
Register here if you can’t make it in person but want to attend online: https://bit.ly/3iqb7l0
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Social-ecological systems and sustainability: three panel discussions
The toughest questions about how to reach a sustainable future are often those that are least addressed by scientists. With this series of panel discussions, Leuphana’s Social-Ecological Systems Institute (SESI, School of Sustainability) seeks to engage a diverse range of scholars on current controversial topics in sustainability such as: Does the convergence of ecological, health, and social crises inevitably result in paralysis, or is there a chance for a better future? Should we conduct sustainability research in the Global South – does it really help there, or is it even post-colonial due to power asymmetries between external science and local life? Which role does political power play in shaping social-ecological research agendas?
Come join us on campus (Hoersaal 2) or online to address these challenging questions.
Getting unstuck: from polycrisis to a better future | 6 June 2024, 1.30 pm
Social-ecological systems research in the Global South: beneficial or post-colonial? |13 June 2024, 1.30 pm
The workings of politics and power behind social-ecological systems research |20 June 2024, 1.30 pm
Register here if you can’t make it in person but want to attend online: https://bit.ly/3iqb7l0
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Native orchid species on a grassland in Northern Germany. Source: Alina Twerski
In this blog article, Vicky Temperton talks about her passion for grasslands and how grasslands can contribute to mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis. Recently she has been nominated to the advisory board on natural climate solutions to advise the ministry of the environment and the German government with her expertise. She did her PhD on trees under climate change conditions, but then switched to research grasslands, because she sees in this field more potential for the sustainability crises.
Vicky, you are dedicating much research and time to grasslands. Why?
There is a personal and a broader answer. Personally, I grew up in Luxembourg, right next to the grasslands, mainly meadows but also pastures with cows. And I also grew up next to forest. For me, a natural landscape is a biodiverse landscape: species rich grasslands and species rich forests. For example, my neighbour, she was from Italy, and she would go out with me into the grassland, and we’d pick the champignons. I also played football in them. So, I kind of got these relational values, those connection to grasslands from a very early age. Grassland was just the place where I lived, and it was and is massively important to me.
What is the broader answer to your passion about grasslands?
I did my PhD on trees, but then after that, my first postdoc in Jena was on degraded grassland and how it was recovering after pollution from the biggest fertilizer factory for phosphorus in the German Democratic Republic. Grasslands cover about a third to 40% of the earth. So, they are everywhere. And they contribute enormous amounts of biodiversity, or at least they used to, and they contribute enormously to the functioning of systems and landscapes and to their ecosystem services.
Why are grasslands so important?
Most of the plant species that we’re currently losing (the ones on the red list of endangered species), for example, in Germany, are species which live in grasslands. Our study (Staude et al. 2023) looked at species on the Red List and found out that 82% of the species on the Red List need high light and 61% need low nitrogen. Before we looked at the data, I would have said that the main driver for biodiversity loss was the nitrogen. But it’s actually even more the light. This was really shocking and eye opening for me.
Humans and other animals have lived with grasslands for millennia. Recent research has found out that this whole idea that the whole landscape before humans, was just forest is probably not correct. With more and larger herbivores around during the period since the last ice age, the co-called “Temperate Forest Biome” probably resembled wood pastures and woodland as well as thicker forest in many places. Pearce et al. (2023) have shown with their recent pan-European study of pollen evidence that the openness and darkness of what we call forest has been very dynamic over time. This affects what we consider to be the best reference conditions or goal for conservation or restoration.
Grasslands are important for people. There’s now a global grasslands dialog platform, run by the WWF that I’m a member of. We’re pushing this because we feel like this biome is being disregarded and not adequately given the attention it deserves considering it covers one third of the planet and is a baseline for many pastoralist cultures as well as rangeland communities. People do not see it or value it enough and this is visible in current science policy. It’s almost analogous with our society only considering men, not women or other genders, yet other genders make up a large proportion of society.
Source: Pixabay
Do you have an example for the disregarding of grasslands?
The Aktion Natürlicher Klimaschutz (ANK) of the German government is the largest environmental funding ever coming from the German parliament, and yet grasslands are not explicitly positioned in the programme description: analagous to their “disappearance” in the words agriculture, rangeland, or farmland, pasture, they are implicitly included in the chapter on peatlands (but these habitats are only one form of grassland, albeit the one that can store by far the most carbon than any habitat) and implicitly included in Urban Green Spaces, as we as well as the chapter on Soils. No-one deemed them important enough to have their own chapter – this could be called grassland blindness. I do find myself wondering, why we are so grassland blind as a society, when we know that to bend the biodiversity curve in Germany (and elsewhere), we would do well to invest a lot more in recreating species-rich grasslands.
To me, a grassland really involves people living in it or around it, often with their livestock or with wild animals, and managing it because otherwise you can’t have a grassland, you can’t keep it open, unless it’s super dry or super wet, or you reintroduce large herbivores.
That means, the perception about grasslands is also really about, if you see humans as part of nature or if you see them separately…
… yes, and the ironic thing is, people talk about forest as the only natural, but then they’re talking about something like a pine monoculture. In what way is this natural? That’s completely absurd. But we seem to have this ingrained view that everything should be forest. And that’s the natural state, and that grasslands are essentially degraded forests. But we have forgotten the large herbivores. Large herbivores were much more dominant in the past and therefore it was a much more open landscape. Also, fire keeps landscapes open.
This idea of what’s natural is very important. People often think that anything that was natural was the forest. Whereas to me it’s both, it’s going back to the Luxembourg story. Grasslands have been around even before humans, as a key component of the landscape (Pearce et al. 2023).
Forests are seen as important for climate change mitigation. What about grasslands?
There’s a big focus on the trees and, planting trees. But moorland, peatland – they’re grasslands – store way more carbon than the forest. Luckily now Germany has kind of understood this. And so, I’ve just joined the advisory board for the German government on natural climate solution, where peatlands are a major focus, as well as forests, urban spaces, soils, and the marine environment.
If you restore peatlands right and you have the water table at the right level, you can store enormous amounts of carbon. Additionally, a study from California (Dass et al. 2018) found that with business-as-usual climate scenarios, the grasslands will be the only remaining habitat that remains a carbon sink, and does not become a net source. Perhaps they have garnered less attention as they are often considered degraded forests, but studies such as Pearce et al. or the Wood Pasture Hypothesis do not align with this view.
When people are just planting trees, they’re not thinking about that there will be more fires because of climate change or more successful pest attacks as the trees weaken in climate change. The huge jarrah trees (Eucalyptus regnans) in Western Australia are keystone species for this wonderful habitat that has been successfully restored after mining, but the large trees are starting to die after temperatures of over 40 degrees in recent months. We need to factor these drivers of change into our response to global change. We are no longer living in a relatively stable world in terms of abiotic conditions, so when striving to mitigate climate change we need to consider the role of the current already changing environmental conditions.
Besides, trees often die anyway because they don’t establish very well (usually around 30% die after planting unless very good care is taken). After a fire, the carbon has gone again into the atmosphere. Therefore, we need to get that carbon below ground, whether it’s in a forest, a moorland, a peatland or a savanna. Grasslands have a lot of plant materials, roots, below the ground which is very good for carbon storage especially longer-term storage. I think this is the research that’s really important to do now: Find out, when grasslands can store carbon and for how long, and compare this across different habitat types. To what extent we have biodiversity and carbon and when not, and which management actions create which outcomes.
Grassland near Garlstorf at the Elbe
What are you exactly researching?
The big question in our Grassworks project is, what leads to success in grassland restoration. We have three regions: North, East and South of Germany with different partners and we’ve looked at over 180 already restored sites. It was a crazy job because, it took two years to do the field work. We’re doing it from an ecological, social and social-ecological perspective. We’re looking at the economics of grasslands, the value systems and leverage points and vector for change as well as the ecological outcomes of restoration. Some of the sites had as a previous land use grassland, some were crops, some were restored for a long time, some for less time. We have these different factors and then it’s a bit like a huge landscape experiment across the whole of Germany. We’re finally getting the results now, and I can’t tell you too much yet, except for the vegetation, it is looking like the best option for ecological success in terms of plants is either to use direct hay transfer methods, or to sow wild seed mixtures if you want to recreate a meadow, but the answer does depend on which positive reference site you use – and the quality of these positive sites varies strongly across Germany.
The other research I’m working on with grasslands has a lot to do with history: Does it matter who arrives first or who arrives later? It’s called priority effect research. This is very interesting because you wouldn’t really expect it, but it can have a very big effect on productivity and biodiversity when certain plant species establish before others. In this experiment in the Lüneburger Heide, it’s called POEM – Priority Effect Mechanisms – there we sow either the grasses first and then later the other groups like forbs (fancy flowering plants) and legumes (such as clover) or the other way round. And then we also have a simultaneous treatment as normal in current restoration. The timing has an effect on the roots. We found that if you put the legumes, all the forbs first, astonishingly the roots go deeper. And we don’t know why. What we’re trying to find out now how persistent this effect is and whether we keep finding this effect across different experiments. Because if we could recreate this, then you might be able to have grasslands that are more adapted to drought, because they would have deeper roots and so be better adapted to finding water under drought conditions.
What do you want to examine in the future?
I want to go further in this story of biodiversity and carbon storage of grasslands: What leads to better carbon sequestration? How can you get the extra carbon into the soil? Does it stay there? There’s contradictory research at the moment. And what role does biodiversity play in this? Is the most carbon stored in the more biodiverse sites or not? And no one really knows this yet because it’s such a huge and challenging job to analyse this because soils are incredibly heterogeneous. Each area is affected by what was growing on it there in the past. Recent research on soil heterogeneity by the Thünen Institute for Climate Smart Agriculture (the group of Axel Don) is showing that soils can differ surprisingly strongly within a few metres of each other. The rock-based underneath is generally similar. It shows the power of the biota to change the soils.
I also want to expand my work on social-ecological aspects of restoration success. The biggest bottleneck for grassland restoration or biodiversity of grasslands is that they’re not valued enough and there are not yet incentives to maintain ore create new species-rich grasslands, especially for farmers. And so, it is also about the motivation for farmers to create specie rich grassland – giving them money and value from society for doing nature-friendly and carbon friendly farming as a contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation and bending the biodiversity curve. There isn’t much of an incentive right now.
Once we interviewed farmers in the Lüneburger Heide and asked, what’s keeping you from going for more of these GAP greening programs or getting the subsidies for that kind of thing? We had the hypothesis that the reason why they weren’t doing it was because it’s a lot of bureaucracy. Turns out, no, it’s actually what the others are doing. So, they’re looking at each other and deciding what they do based on their peer group. And this shows that there is a lever or change.
What should politics do?
I’m hoping, that when we finish the Grassworks project, that we’ll have some concrete recommendations. I think financial incentives could play a big role, but also the leverage related to connections and relational values, I think if people experience this kind of biodiversity more, if they’re used to it and seeing it in the landscape as well as knowing all the benefits we derive from it, I think then then they’d be more interested in saving or restoring it.
Interview by Mareike Andert
Read more about the topics here:
Dass, Pawlok et al. (2018): Grasslands may be more reliable carbon sinks than forests in California. Environ. Res. Lett. 13 074027. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/aacb39.
Pearce, Elena A. et al. (2023): Substantial light woodland and open vegetation characterized the temperate forest biome before Homo sapiens. Sci. Adv. 9. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi9135.
Staude, Ingmar R. (2023): Prioritize grassland restoration to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Restoration Ecology, 31, 5. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13931
Look forward to three upcoming online-events and an exhibition at the SES-Institute: “Social-Ecological Systems – An Artistic Journey”.
Exhibition
The exhibition will take place in the foyer of the library at the Leuphana University from 6th to 20th, June.
Panel Discussions
The panel discussions will be on the 6th, 13th and 20th, June, 1:30PM-2:30PM CEST. Stay tuned and register here: https://bit.ly/3iqb7l0 . Online and in-person.
June 6 | Getting unstuck: from polycrisis to a better future.
June 13 | Social-ecological systems research in the Global South: beneficial or post-colonial?
June 20 | The workings of politics and power behind social-ecological systems research.
Natural forest and restoration activties in western Rwanda.
Principles for natural resource management can serve many different purposes: they can simplify processes, facilitate negotiation processes between stakeholders, guide concrete action on the ground, and – in the best case – they can form the basis for success. Such principles also exist for ecosystem restoration.
Proper restoration is not that easy, but it is extremely important, as many ecosystems have been destroyed by humans. Healthy ecosystems are positive for human well-being and make us more resilient to sustainability crises such as global warming. It is ecologically, politically and socially challenging to get complex ecosystems with all their functions and processes up and running again. For that, various restoration guidelines exist. One set are the 10 “Principles to guide the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030”, which were developed by key restoration actors. Obviously, principles alone are not enough; their relevance in practice is crucial.
Therefore, Marina Frietsch and colleagues assessed “the perceived relevance of restoration principles in practice in a case study in Rwanda“. Their aim was “to assess to what extent the 10 international restoration principles put forward for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration are relevant to restoration practice among stakeholders in Rwanda.” To this end, they conducted a Q-study with 32 key actors involved in restoration interventions in western Rwanda. In a nutshell, study participants were asked to rank 20 proxy statements about factors that can contribute to successful restoration.
The analysis showed that the 10 principles are actually relevant in practice. The results can be clustered in such a way that three groups of stakeholder perspectives emerge, i.e. groups that have different opinions about what is needed for successful restoration:
Group 1: “You Can’t Treat a Disease If You Don’t Know the Cause”
Group 2: “Where Trees Grow, People Grow”
Group 3: “Real-World Knowledge Should Be the Foundation of Every Restoration Project”
Moreover, the participants expressed additional features that should be highlighted when discussing approaches for successful restoration practice:
restoring historical conditions
collecting baseline data
increasing local communities’ sense of ownership
pursuing a long-term vision for restoration activities.
Whereas the first two features are classical ecological priorities for restoration, the third is political in nature – this can be seen as connected to the current discourses on equity and justice in restoration issues. The fourth feature connects the other three by emphasizing that restoration is a challenging ecological, social as well as long-term task.
Although perspectives on what is important for designing and implementing restoration interventions in western Rwanda differ, they should be seen as complementary. Differing views on how to best approach restoration do not necessarily need to result in conflicts between stakeholder-groups, but can inspire integrated restoration activities that account for different needs and values – particularly in situations involving transdisciplinary approaches for deliberation and collaboration.
“The best part of this study was when participants reported back that the Q-method exercise inspired them to reflect their own attitudes and values regarding successful restoration and even sparked discussions with their colleagues”, says Marina Frietsch from SES-Institute.
For the Q-study, participants were given a scoreboard with 20 empty fields along a gradient from least to most important for successful restoration to sort proxy statements according to their own priorities. In a next step, they were asked to build towers using 60 LEGO bricks to illustrate the extent of application of each statement in practice.
Marina Frietsch, Joern Fischer, Beth A. Kaplin, Berta Martín-Lopez (2024). The relevance of international restoration principles for ecosystem restoration practice in Rwanda. Restoration Ecology Vol. 32, No. 3, e14085
Coasts provide special habitats for a wide variety of life forms. They also protect against erosion caused by storm surges and other large waves such as tsunamis. However, whether in Europe, Southeast Asia or Africa – coastal ecosystems are threatened worldwide due to anthropogenic sustainability crises such as the climate crises or pollution. People in the Global South in particular suffer from the consequences of changing coasts due to (neo-)colonialism, globalization and capitalism as well as unstable political and economic conditions.
“The literature review interestingly showed that (a) anticipatory research in the Global South has relatively speaking not increased over the last decade, and (b) much focus in transdisciplinary transformative research is on “past and current state” analyses and not on visioning.”
Maraja Riechers from SES-Institute
Relying solely on traditional academic knowledge may not be sufficient to protect those coasts and to facilitate the emergence of alternative sustainable visions, researchers from the SES-Institute at the Leuphana University are convinced. On the contrary, scientific efforts must innovate transformative methodologies and methods to support sustainable visions. Anticipation research in combination with transdisciplinary research is key in promoting sustainability transformation by enhancing alternative future scenarios in collaboration with stakeholders. Innovative research methods can create imaginative spaces, introducing novel ways of living and emphasizing radical, innovative, and sustainable goals to drive transformation towards a more sustainable future.
Therefore, Maraja Riechers, Lilly Baumann and colleagues analysed the extent to which transdisciplinary approaches applied to cases in the Global South consider ‘anticipation of the future’ of coastal systems. To answer this, they conducted a systematic literature review analysing 256 peer reviewed articles.
The systematic literature review revealed that the majority of the reviewed articles focused on analyzing past and current states instead of research on plausible futures, transition strategies or visioning research. The use of anticipation research, if conducted, primarily emphasized plausible and (im)probable futures, rather than pluralistic or performative scenarios, and aimed to enhance present capacities rather than mobilize or question various social actors and political implications in the current context. Articles utilizing anticipation methods seldom explored the connection between anticipation and sustainability transformation.
Transform framework with integrated numbers of articles found in each step, represented by the size of the circles. One article could perform more than one step of the framework. Adapted from (Wiek and Lang 2016).
Distribution of reviewed articles describing transdisciplinary and transformative research that work with (grey) and without (black) anticipation approaches specifically and from 2001 to 2020 in percent (legend on the left); number of articles in this literature by time (legend on the right).
Approaches to anticipatory governance with integrated numbers of articles found in each approach, represented by the size of the circles. One article could apply more than one step of the framework. Adapted from (Muiderman et al. 2020).
However, combining transdisciplinary and anticipation research can synergistically drive sustainability transformation. This combined approach can incorporate diverse perspectives and values of stakeholders, fostering alternative visions to challenge unsustainable narratives.
Their findings suggest enhancing the integration of transdisciplinary and anticipation methodologies in research to highlight alternative visions of sustainability that may already exist and to amplify diverse values, epistemologies, and ontologies.
By doing so, future visions may become more inclusive and reflective of realities in the Global South. Anticipating the future through transdisciplinary methods can lay the groundwork for managing future environmental and societal challenges adaptively. This approach can offer insights to identify, mitigate, or prevent governance actions leading to undesirable future outcomes. Integrating anticipation and foresight into transdisciplinary research holds promise for realizing innovative and sustainable future visions.
Using transdisciplinary anticipatory research offers the opportunity to produce knowledge which could lead to meaningful contributions to protect and sustain coastal regions, their ecosystems and values for people.
Lilly Baumann is the first author of the paper and did this research for her bachelor thesis.
This article is part of a (completed) working group of the German Commission on Sustainability (Deutschen Kommission Nachhaltigkeit (DKN)) of Future Earth. More information here.
Lilly Baumann, Maraja Riechers, Louis Celliers & Sebastian C. A. Ferse (2023). Anticipating and transforming futures: a literature review on transdisciplinary coastal research in the Global South, Ecosystems and People, 19:1, 2288957
The Pinova Festival is the crowning glory of a module of the sustainability science minor at the Leuphana University. For two years, the students intensively researched biodiversity at a local orchard, surpassing themselves and their lecturers in the process. At the end of January 2024, the current cohort presented their research results in a variety of creative ways at the Pinova Festival ranging from videos to games.
Prof. Dr. Vicky Temperton and Prof. Dr. Berta Martin-Lopez are in charge of this module, where other lecturers are also contributing: Manuel Pacheco-Romero, Miguel A. Cebrian-Piqueras, Emanuela W. A. Weidlich, Milena Gross, and Eva Völler.
Sumirti Singaravelu supported the module as the student assistant studying sustainability science in her minor herself and in her major economics. Prof. Dr. Berta Martin-Lopez and Sumirti Singaravelu share their impressions from the module and the festival.
The minor
“With the study program, we want to have an impact in the world and one in this orchard. The idea of the minor was basically to gain the skills for transdisciplinary science. You cannot do this in one semester. So that’s why we decided to go for these two years.
What I like about the minor is the evolution of the students. At the beginning, they do not see where they are going. They feel lost and we say them ‘trust in the process’. I like to see how much they grow. The way they discuss – it’s amazing. They spoke in the panel discussion at the festival way better than many scientists I have seen with professorships.” Berta
The students can try things out, learn from each other and apply their knowledge in practice. Since the students have different majors, they bring different perspectives and knowledge to the minor and can thus learn a lot from each other and also make knowledge from the minor fruitful in the major and vice versa.
“One of the beauties of this minor is that you can cross-pollinate ideas from different majors.For instance, if I’m using some statistics in the minor, I actually go back to my economics statistics class in order to check whether I can transfer some of the ideas.” Sumirti
Four special semesters…
… in the first semester the students learn the concepts of sustainability.
… in the second semester they get an idea of the methods and develop own research questions.
… in the third and fourth semester they do their own research projects, e.g. sampling and monitoring butterflies or mammals to answer their research questions.
“The first two semesters the lecturers encourage us to get associated with theoretical ideas behind ecological restoration and conservation. While the last two semesters are a one year project. We do work the theories in practical in the orchard. So, it’s like one year of full theory and one year of full practice.” Sumirti
The festival
“I like ending the minor program with a festival first, because it is like a celebration of the work of the students. This way the students engage way more than they would if it would be an exam. The Pinova Festival is organized by the science communication group, but everyone has to chip in because the success of the festival is when every group present their results in an innovative way. It fosters collaboration with the whole cohort.
I like very much that the Pinova Festival is a surprise because we know what the students are doing, but we don’t know how they are going to present it. It will always bring a surprise to us and the rest of the audience.
Yeah. So basically, what I like is that it allows the students to be creative, it allows them to fly, it allows them to collaborate, and all of these bring better results that an exam.”
Berta.
From a horse paddock to a biodiversity rich orchard
The current cohort of students analysed different aspects of biodiversity at a local orchard in four different groups:
Understory-Pollinator group doing research on pollinators.
Butterfly group analysing butterflies in the orchards.
Camera Trap group tracking mammals and birds.
Outreach group responsible for the science communication and organising the festival. Watch their documentary here.
Students from the Leuphana University have done experiments in the orchards since 2016. They planted different trees, did experiments and manged the area. Over the years biodiversity has increased: more butterflies, more pollinators, more mammals.
The Orchard has been a site of ecological restoration and a long-standing initiative of the Traditional Orchard Club of Lüneburg. The Leuphana University has joined hands with them since 2016. The Orchard was restored from a former 2.700 square metres large horse paddock. It has 15 apple trees, 2 cherry trees, and 1 pear tree. It is surrounded by agricultural fields, private residencies, and an old train track.
Because of that, it is not just a module, but a long-term biodiversity monitoring program: Each cohort analyses biodiversity from different perspectives in the orchard. The student groups then pass their knowledge to the next cohort.
“Although there are different students working on the orchard, each of them brings their own ideas to make their research better. The interesting thing to me is that every year we get better and better because the students are improving from the past generations to the point that, for example, they also go way beyond the skills of the lecturers.” Berta
Major results from the current cohort
The Understory-Pollinator detected less pollinators and the Butterfly group detected less butterflies. They analysed how this is connected to the weather conditions.
The Camera Trap group tracked less big mammals but more small mammals, e.g., rabbits and raccoons, and new deer and sub-species, because they changed the position of the camera and used a new AI called Agouti. It is an AI created by Wageningen University and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest to classify species from the images.
You can have a look at the flyers with their results and the list of authors here.
The Outreach group produced science communication and organised the festival. Watch their documentary here.
Abstract economics vs. practical work in the orchard
“In economics, we mostly deal with models. But when you come to the orchard and when you actually look and deal with the real-life research, you get to know that there are several things which are not actually compatible with the models.” Sumirti
Through the theoretical foundation plus the subsequent practical application of knowledge about biodiversity and conservation, students learn much more in the orchard than would be possible in the lecture hall.
“When we talk about climate change in environmental economics, we deal with ideas or concepts which are far away from me, e.g., carbon trading. In the orchard, it is different: Once a team of volunteers mowed the grass in such a way that instead of cutting the grass completely, it just cuts in such a way that the water content of the grass doesn’t go out completely. So, there is still wetness in the grass. And so, this is one of the ways to retain the grass from getting burnt due to the high temperature. Besides, this is cost efficient, it reduces the CO2 that is being produced from the mowing and most importantly, this new technology actually protects 88% of diversity in the orchard. So, economics bring extremely complex solutions. But actually, all you need is to have a good machinery to do the mowing.” Sumirti
Forming personal relationships with nature in the orchard – feeling at home
“A beauty of this minor is that many of the students are not necessarily in contact with nature in their majors and through the minor, there is no other way out. They have to spend one semester in the orchard. The students were reporting that it was remarkable for them because suddenly they develop relational values, human-nature connections. One of the students highlighted his experience with butterflies and said that it was like the most beautiful thing he done in his life, catching butterflies and releasing the butterflies. So, it also touches their lives in the sense how they connect with nature and how they connect with others through nature.” Berta
“I come from India, which is a very tropical country. And so, I cannot spot all German trees and name them, but I do know about them, I do know that this tree is this and this tree has this property. But once I came to Germany, one of my major problems was that I just couldn’t have any value of any relationship to any of the plants around me, which actually was off putting because I am doing this minor, which is in ecological conservation. But I couldn’t have a story apart from the name and the size and the biological taxonomy of the tree.
So, I asked the other students: ‘can you give me a memory which you have associated with your trees, or can you talk about your trees in your childhood?’ So that’s one of my ways to develop my relationship with my surroundings in Germany.
I think this is really important for someone who is coming to Germany as an immigrant in order to be local and also to reduce the foreignness for a land.
I can now identify the different trees and when I see an oak tree, there are memories of my friends which they have shared their stories about it. And I often connect with the tree through those stories.”
Are we in the midst of a sixth mass extinction? Species extinction has largely been driven by environmental change over geological timescales, with the K-Pg extinction (the one that killed off the dinosaurs) being a notable event where a large diversity of species went extinct due to an asteroid collision. However, in more recent times, especially over the past 10,000 years, humans have begun to play an important role in the extinction process and biodiversity decline on global scales. When a species goes extinct, we are left with fragments. Sometimes bones, skins, and historical testimonies are the only remains that reflect what once was. We can only study what is available to us, and so it is from these fragments that we attempt to tell a story. We turn to the Great Auk as a lesson in human-driven extinction to guide coexistence between us and other species for the future.
The Great Auk, a large flightless seabird that went extinct in the mid-1800s, was a witch. A witch?! At least, that is what Scottish legend would have us believe. According to three Scottish fishermen, the last Great Auk ever seen alive was captured on the islet of Stac an Armin, St. Kilda, Scotland, strangled, and beaten to death in the year 1844 because it was a storm-causing witch that threatened their lives (The Extinction of the Great Auk; Figure 1). This story highlights the unknowns that remain regarding where and when the last Great Auk was, and demonstrates that not all reports may be valid.
From the bones recovered at archaeological sites and reported sightings, we know that the species occurred along both sides of the North Atlantic ocean on coastlines, and its range contracted to only a couple populations by the 1800s. Its last confirmed capture was on Eldey Island, Iceland in 1844 (Greenway, 1958). The Great Auk was first hunted for its meat by fishermen and then later for its feathers, which demanded large-scale unsustainable harvesting. This occurred more rapidly first in Europe, and then expanded west to North America. It was the commercial demand for feathers that was primarily responsible for extirpating the species (Cartwright, 1792), making the last few strongholds of individuals more vulnerable to proximate causes of extinction. English Captain George Cartwright foretold the Great Auk’s extinction on July 25, 1785 at Funk Island, Canada:
…it has been customary of late years for several crews of men to live all the summer on that island, for the sole purpose of killing birds for the sake of their feathers; the destruction which they have made is incredible. If a stop is not put soon to that practice the whole breed will be diminished to almost nothing, particularly the penguins: for this is now the only island they have left to breed upon. (Cartwright, 1792)
In 1830, a volcanic eruption on Geirfuglasker, Iceland – one of the known last strongholds for the species – hastened its extinction as the last few individuals relocated to Eldey Island, Iceland. This island was much closer to the mainland and more accessible by boat whereas travel to Geirfuglasker had been a dangerous feat (Bengston, 1984). Ironically, the last few individuals were killed by people sent by natural history museum collectors, desiring to obtain the last few individuals for their collections. Unlike today, conservation was not the priority, even for museums and ornithologists in the 19th century. In 1812, a fisherman received £15 (£1,120.37 today or $1,488.37) for selling a Great Auk to the British Museum (Grieve, 1885). Dr. Jessica Thomas conducted population viability analysis for Great Auks across their entire range, confirming that humans were primarily responsible for driving the species to extinction; all impact scenarios including a 10.5% harvest rate (far below reported historical harvest rates) resulted in rapid extinction within a few centuries (Thomas et al., 2019).
However, many unknowns remain regarding the species extinction. Was Iceland the only last stronghold for the species? Why did certain populations disappear earlier whereas others persisted longer? What do human-auk relationships show us? We seek to answer these questions with extinction timing modeling and cultural analysis.
Figure 2. Auks painted by Archibald Thorburn, including the Great Auk in the lower middle (1860-1935).
Researchers at Middlebury College in Vermont have recently compiled the first comprehensive database of all existing radiocarbon dates and sighting dates for the Great Auk across its entire North Atlantic range (manuscript in preparation for publication). They employed extinction timing models to compare estimates between datasets and populations. Sighting-based estimates suggest extinction occurred within two decades following the last capture (i.e., the 1840s to 1860s), with the North-West Atlantic population going extinct about the same time as the North-East Atlantic population (1860 CE). However, there is much greater uncertainty of extinction for the North-West Atlantic population and radiocarbon data prematurely estimates extinction timing for the entire range, precipitating the need for more radiocarbon dates on geologically recent material. This suggests that Iceland may not be the only last stronghold for the species, but more radiocarbon dates are needed to truly determine Great Auk presence in regions of North America near the “true” extinction date.
Middlebury College researchers also approached these questions from an anthropological angle. They synthesized the existing information on Great Auk occurrence and compared human-Great Auk relationships – utilizing historical, ethnographic, and archaeological sources – across the species’ entire Holocene North Atlantic range leading up to extinction in 1844 (manuscript in preparation for publication). They found stark contrasts in Great Auk use between Indigenous and European settler-colonist communities, demonstrating that European populations were overexploited first followed by North American populations which later experienced the introduction of exploitative dynamics. For instance, the Indigenous People of Newfoundland, the Beothuk, revered the Great Auk and called it “Apponath”. In one human grave dating about four thousand years ago, there was a bone hairpin with an effigy of a Great Auk’s head as well as over 150 upper mandibles positioned around the body indicating that they constituted part of a feathered cape (Tuck, 1976). The Great Auk clearly had symbolic value in this culture. In contrast, European settler-colonists generally exploited the bird for profit and engaged in cruel and unsustainable harvest practices. This cultural analysis reveals the importance of considering differing human harvest practices when studying how a species range collapses over time, and why certain populations might persist longer than others.
Why should we study the Great Auk, or any extinct species? Seabirds, or species that rely on the marine environment for some part of each year, are currently the most threatened group of any living group of birds. Of 346 extant seabird species, 97 (28%) are globally threatened, and another 10% are listed as Near Threatened. Three species are classified as extinct: The Large St Helena Petrel (Pterodroma rupinarum), Small St Helena Petrel (Bulweria bifax), and the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) (Croxall et al., 2012). Examining a seabird’s range collapse and extinction, such as that of the Great Auk, is of great importance as it offers insight into how seabird populations today may undergo varying trajectories of decline and recovery, as well as how to prevent future human-driven extinctions. The extinction of the Great Auk is not an isolated event but a continuation of a pattern of avian extinction on islands and coastlines. A pattern that we can change with evidence-based and human-driven conservation.
We can learn from the extinction of the Great Auk, conserve animals for future use and appreciation, and redefine the 21st century as a human success in restoring Earth’s biodiversity. As Peter Nielsen, a Danish merchant from South Iceland, wrote a century ago “the fate of the Great Auk should teach us to treat with caution those birds that are becoming fewer…and remember that we must pass the bird populations we have inherited from earlier generations on to the generations that follow us (Icelandic Museum of Natural History, 2016).
Lucia Snyderman is a recent college graduate from Middlebury College in Vermont, where she majored in Biology and studied the extinction dynamics of a flightless seabird, the Great Auk, for her senior thesis. She plans to continue investigating how humans and climate change impact species through time in graduate school.
Bengtson, S-A. (1984). Breeding Ecology and Extinction of the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis): Anecdotal Evidence and Conjectures. The Auk, 101(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/101.1.1
Cartwright, G. (1792). A journal of transactions and events, during a residence of nearly sixteenyears on the coast of Labrador containing many interesting particulars, both of the country and its inhabitants, not hitherto known. Allin and Ridge.
Croxall, J. P., Butchart S. H. M., Lascelles, B., Stattersfield, A. J., Sullivan, B., Symes, A., & Taylor, P. (2012). Seabird conservation status, threats and priority actions: a global assessment. Bird Conservation International, 22(1), 1–34. doi:10.1017/S0959270912000020
Greenway, J. C. (1958). Extinct and vanishing birds of the world. Spec. Publ.
Grieve, S. (1885). The great auk, or garefowl (alca impennis, Linn.): Its history, archaeology,and remains. Grange Publishing Works.
Thomas J. E. (2019). Demographic reconstruction from ancient DNA supports rapid extinction of the great auk. eLife. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47509
Tuck, J. A. (1976). Ancient People of Port au Choix. St. John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research. Memorial University of Newfoundland.
The trend is downwards – also in Tanzania: wildlife populations have declined over the past, and oftentimes so also in protected areas. A team from Leuphana University and international collaborators investigated in how far wildlife trends showed effectiveness of protected areas in Western Tanzania. To obtain current estimates, they conducted line transect surveys in 2021 within two important protected areas, Katavi National Park and Rukwa Game Reserve. These surveys used a similar transect layout and field protocols as a previous wildlife survey conducted in 2004.
The objective was to assess whether the populations of six major herbivore species – elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, topi, and hartebeest – have experienced a decline over this time. They assumed decline due to different anthropogenic influences such as land use change and high level of illegal hunting. They compared estimated densities and observed group sizes.
Results
In contrast to many studies showing a decline in wildlife, the results of this study showed no evidence of widespread population decline between 2004 and 2021. However, group sizes appear to have decreased. Although these findings of stable populations do not discredit previous research on wildlife declines, they suggest the possibility of a stabilization phase following those declines.
These finding could have different reasons. It could be due to timing or different underlying baselines. This emphasizes the significance of considering suitable timeframes and historical contexts when evaluating the effectiveness of conservation efforts. Therefore, it is extremely important to look at the context to avoid the phenomenon where each generation perceives the deteriorating state of the environment as the ‘new normal’, known as the Shifting Baseline Syndrome, for example.
These hopeful results and the possible upward trend could likely be attributed to the impressive resilience of these species and the dedicated conservation efforts. During the period between the two surveys, Tanzanian authorities took action against illegal elephant hunting and successfully prosecuted multiple transnational ivory poaching and trafficking syndicates, leading to a reduction in illegal hunting of elephants. Furthermore, this data also suggest that legal trophy hunting may contribute to the preservation of wildlife in the ecosystem. However, the data does not allow for a more detailed analysis of the sustainability of trophy hunting.
To enable wildlife to thrive in the future, an integrated approach that takes into account the needs of humans and animals should probably be adopted.
“Protected areas alone are insufficient to mitigate the challenges faced by animals and ecosystems. Nonetheless, without legal safeguarding, the presence of charismatic species like elephants and giraffes in their natural habitats would be uncertain in this region. While our study offers optimism regarding conservation effectiveness through enforcement, further research from our team reveals a significant rise in anthropogenic threats near the park. Therefore, it is imperative to thoughtfully craft future conservation strategies.”
Jacqueline Loos from SES-Institute
If you would like to explore this topic further, you can find the whole paper here.
Christian Kiffner, Richard A. Giliba, Pascal Fust, Jacqueline Loos, Matthias Waltert (2023): Assessing protected area effectiveness in western Tanzania: Insights from repeated line transect surveys. In: Afr J Ecol. 2023;61:966–979. DOI: 10.1111/aje.13200
Including populations with disabilities in plans, strategies, and decision-making is therefore crucial for progress towards just and sustainable futures amid climate and environmental crises, argue Berta Martín-López and colleagues in their paper “Pathways towards sustainable and just futures with and for disabled populations: a leverage points perspective”.
They demand inclusive transformation pathways by proposing ‘deep’ leverage points to include people with disability and their knowledge in tackling the climate crises: reconnect, re-structure and re-think the role of people with disabilities to enable transformative and inclusive change.
Deep leverage points encompass shifts in the fundamental values and worldviews held by individuals that influence the trajectory of a system, along with the social structures that govern the system.
“Growing up with a mother with multiple sclerosis and having a disability myself, I understood the need to consider this social group in decision-making. The way that people with disabilities value and connect with nature might be unique and, at the same time, their access to nature is often limited. Recognizing the values, visions and knowledge held by people with disabilities in scientific and policy contexts can contribute to reduce inequalities in sustainability and environmental programs.”
Berta Martín-López from the SES-Institute
They give recommendations for blind-spots and illustrate how pathways towards inclusive and transformative change could look like. They focus on people with disabilities, who have often been overlooked in studies examining their connection and appreciation of nature – re-connect, their involvement in environmental governance – re-structure and their contribution to knowledge generation for sustainable transformations – re-think.
Those three realms of deep leverage offer pathways to engage with the values, visions, and knowledge of people with disabilities in scientific and policy contexts, reducing inequalities and fostering sustainability.
Re-Connect
Re-connection is about unleashing values that promote human-nature connectedness: How do disabled people interact with nature? How can they re-connect and what are obstacles, which hinder them? How can people with disabilities be included in valuation processes? People with disabilities should be part of research on human-nature connections. Collaborations between environmental and disability scholars can drive transformative change and inclusive academic institutional shifts.
Re-Structure
Re-structuring is about fostering justice and inclusion in decision- and policy-making: How are institutions structured? In what way do they produce and re-produce inequalities? How can they be re-structured for a just future? How can institutions become more inclusive? Three pathways are suggested: reflecting on institutional failures, including the voices of people with disabilities in sustainability knowledge and decision-making, and actively engaging this community in international science-policy processes.
Re-Think
Re-thinking is about promoting education and knowledge generation and sharing: How can knowledge be produced to help transformation? How could inclusive education look like? Suggestions are: Inclusive education should involve all stakeholder groups, including people with disabilities. Also, knowledge production and sharing processes should adapt to the challenges posed by different disabilities, incorporating slow and participatory approaches. Moreover, knowledge co-production for sustainability transformations should value the expertise of people with disabilities, enabling equitable transformative processes in academia. This integration of diverse knowledge is crucial for creating sustainable and equitable outcomes.
Aleksandra Kosanic, Jan Petzold & Berta Martín-López (2023): Pathways towards sustainable and just futures with and for disabled populations: a leverage points perspective. In: Ecosystems and People. VOL. 19, NO. 1, 2274590. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2274590
Ideas for Sustainability 