CGTN Europe interviewed Becky Chaplin-Kramer, Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund
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00:00Welcome back to Global Business Europe.
00:03The World Wildlife Fund is warning that humanity could be at risk of losing invisible benefits
00:08of biodiversity.
00:10They found that the vital support that wildlife provides is underrepresented in science and
00:15policy discussions, and it's feared that that could mean a critical lack of action
00:19on conservation.
00:20Let's talk now to Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer, who's the WWF's Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist.
00:27Welcome to the program, good to see you.
00:29So give us a bit of a background to this.
00:32What's the scale of the problem?
00:33How much risk is our biodiversity under?
00:36Well, the IUCN has listed 50,000 species that are threatened with extinction.
00:42That's more than a quarter of the total number of species assessed, but there are millions
00:46more that we don't even know the status of, and so many of these play integral roles in
00:51their ecosystems.
00:53And the roles they play are in jeopardy long before they actually go extinct.
00:56They can't perform their regular duties at lower abundance, and what WWF has found is
01:02that wildlife populations have declined on average 73% since 1970.
01:08So is this what you mean by this term, invisible benefits?
01:11Are you saying that biodiversity loss, species loss, has a bigger impact than just that in
01:16itself?
01:17Yeah, well, you know, some of the benefits that wildlife provide are conspicuous.
01:22We can see them.
01:23Food from hunting or fishing, pollination and pest control, wildlife-based tourism is
01:27a huge industry, but wildlife are at work shaping ecosystems all the time, and just
01:33because we can't see them doesn't diminish their importance.
01:36Animal seed dispersers greatly influence the diversity and even the amount of carbon stored
01:41in a forest, the largest seeds that would otherwise just drop to the shade of their
01:46parents if the animals didn't disperse them.
01:49Dispersers keep down overgrazing and diseases, grazers and burrowers aerate the soil and
01:54dramatically increase the diversity across landscapes.
01:57And many species actually engineer whole ecosystems into existence, like beavers, whose dams create
02:05new lakes storing and purifying water.
02:08So is this an issue, do you think, that's currently being taken seriously enough?
02:14I think we just don't appreciate the connections between species and ecosystems.
02:19Sometimes when people think about nature, they think of a place.
02:22And that's not wrong, but it's also all the life inside the place.
02:26So if we're only preserving the places without attending to the species that inhabit them,
02:31we might be preserving increasingly empty places.
02:35And without their wildlife, as I just said, ecosystems won't look or function the same,
02:39so they can't necessarily provide those benefits to people.
02:43So what should governments and policymakers be doing to try and change things?
02:49Well, one part is to bring together these different goals that we have.
02:52We have frameworks for biodiversity.
02:55The countries will be getting together again next month to discuss how to mobilize finance
02:59for the ambitious commitments that have already been made.
03:02But we really need to start connecting the agendas between species and ecosystems, recognizing
03:07that the success of one really depends on the others.
03:11What about us?
03:12That's the policy level, if you like.
03:13But what about individually?
03:15What can we do to try and keep our biodiversity?
03:19Well, I think a big piece of it is recognizing that, again, it's not just about setting aside
03:25places, which is super important, but wildlife face a lot of other threats, many of which
03:30we contribute to, in addition to habitat loss, over-exploitation, too much hunting, overfishing,
03:38pollution, all the pollution that we create, invasive species, when we are transporting
03:43our goods or even our vehicles from one place to another, we often carry species with us.
03:48And of course, climate change.
03:50So in order to really address this crisis, we have to be tackling all these problems
03:54together.
03:55And when it comes to losing species, the value of wildlife, if you want to put it like that,
04:01it's sort of bigger than just their physical existence, isn't it?
04:04We lose more than just a species when we lose them.
04:07Yeah, absolutely.
04:10It's hard to even pick one species when we talk about these things.
04:17They're also interconnected, but there are some species that ecologists call keystones,
04:22like that center stone in an archway, that if you pull it out, the whole thing would
04:26collapse.
04:27And so we talk about keystone species because we've actually witnessed the whole ecosystem
04:31changing when they've been removed or significantly reduced.
04:34A lot of these are predators, like wolves or sea otters that we feature in this paper,
04:40whose overhunting led to explosions of grazers like deer or sea urchins that completely transformed
04:46the ecosystem.
04:47In the case of sea otters, the urchins decimated kelp forests without the sea otters to control
04:52them.
04:53And along with that went all the benefits that kelp forest provides, carbon storage,
04:57protection from coastal storms, nurseries for many fish.
05:01We can't just think about the economic value of the sea otter pelt, but really all of the
05:05different benefits that came from that intact and healthy ecosystem.
05:09Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer, great to talk to you.
05:12Thank you so much for coming on the program.
05:14That's Dr. Becky Chaplin-Kramer from WWF.