COAL + ICE Podcast - Ep4: Going, Going, Gone: Biodiversity & Climate Change

Ep4: Going, Going, Gone: Biodiversity & Climate Change

03/08/22 • 40 min

Enjoy nature? Well, do it while you can. We’re losing as many as 200 species a day, scientists say – plants, animals, birds, bugs – with cascading effects for all other species, including humans. And it's humans – our factories, cars, planes and power plants, our sprawling cities and mono-culture farms – who have disrupted complex ecosystems and are speeding climate change.

Dr. Gretta Pecl and Sakhile Koketso join this episode to discuss the many impacts of biodiversity loss, the challenges of combatting climate change at various scales, why biodiversity matters to all of us, and how our current trajectory is on track to making us the ‘crappiest ancestors ever’ for all our future generations – though we still have time to avoid the worst, with the right actions now.

Guest Bios

Dr. Gretta Pecl is a professor of marine ecology at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and the Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology. She leads many projects and initiatives, including the Future Seas project, the citizen science project Redmap Australia, and the Species on the Move conference. She is a lead author on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation.

Sakhile Koketso heads Science, Policy and Governance at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). She has also worked with Whitebird Environ Consult Inc., the Green Climate Fund, the Kalahari Conservation Society, the United Nations Development Programme, and with national parks in Botswana, her country of origin.

Guest Host Bio

Taili Ni, assistant producer of the COAL+ICE Podcast, is a program officer at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.
Clownfish episode photo: Copyright Bing Lin.

Guest Bios

Guest Host Bio

Taili Ni, assistant producer of the COAL+ICE Podcast, is a program officer at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.
Clownfish episode photo: Copyright Bing Lin.

Previous Episode

Ep3: Himalayas' Melting Glaciers Impact Billions

Himalayan glaciers have long served as a frozen water tower, releasing water on which billions of Asians rely — into ten of Asia's mighty rivers, into agricultural and food systems, and into ground water. Climate change is now rapidly melting those glaciers — up to two-thirds of them may be gone by the end of this century — throwing ecosystems throughout the region off-balance.
Anjal Prakash has been studying all of this for more than two decades, helping both rural and urban communities adapt to climate change and its increasing drought, floods, and wilder storms and cyclones. He's research director and an adjunct associate professor at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, in India.

Next Episode

Ep5: Feeding the World in a Climate Change Future

We've all got to eat. And climate change is throwing us new challenges as to how to feed a global population that's getting bigger, more urban, and more affluent -- and make sure the world's poorest have enough nutritious food too.
This would have been a challenge without climate change. With it, farmers need to adapt to wilder weather, less predictable rainfall, and shifting growing zones that sometimes mean they can't plant what they long did, and have to find new crops that are resilient to the new normal.
Meanwhile, efforts are afoot to cut emissions that agriculture itself contributes to climate change.
In this episode, breaking down this complex set of issues in simple terms, with on-the-ground knowledge are:
Channing Arndt, director of the environment, production, technology division at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
&
Dawit Mekonnen, research fellow in Ethiopia for the International Food Policy Research Institute.