Nature Positive with Joseph Bull

In this episode we talk to Dr. Joseph Bull, Associate Professor in Climate Change Biology at the University of Oxford and find out what is meant by the term Nature Positive. We look at reasons for pragmatic optimism in the face of biodiversity decline and find out more about his work in the Aral Sea and why deserts are not as deserted as you might think.

You can see a full version of Jo speaking at the Leverhulme Centre at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLSWXIb2ycM

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Transcript

stephen thomas: 0:05

Welcome to the nature recovery podcast, we're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline. And we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. So very glad that my guest this week is Professor Joseph bull, who is an associate professor in climate change Biology at the University of Oxford, could you tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you do at the University of Oxford? Sure. So

Joseph Bull: 0:39

I'm an associate professor in climate change biology, as you say. And really, my focus is on biodiversity impacts of human activities, and how those are influenced in the context of environmental change. So including climate change, obviously. So the end of the day, really, I'm interested in the impact of what we do, how we live our lives, and the things that we've produced and consumed as part of our lives, the impacts of those things on biodiversity and how to mitigate those impacts how to reduce and reverse those impacts. To do so, I work a lot with large organisations are the roots of global supply chains. So for example, extractive sector organisations, transport and other infrastructure organisations, consumer products, organisations to try and look and understand how they directly through their supply chains. Reduce biodiversity and how it can be reversed.

stephen thomas: 1:29

Okay, great. Well, that's fascinating, and sounds extremely important. And obviously, our focus at the centre is is about nature recovery. And one of the things we're finding is when we talk to people, depending on the background that they come from, it can mean a lot of different things to the individual. So you know, when you hear the phrase nature recovery, what what does that mean to you?

Joseph Bull: 1:51

So I always think about it in relation to the idea of nature positive, which is what I talked about as part of the weekend centre, seminar series recently. And nature positive is really a way of saying, having quantified our impacts on biodiversity can work as an economy or as an organisation or individual? can we mitigate those impacts, and then reverse them through proactive conservation actions? And considering all of those things together against a current baseline? Or, you know, how much nature we have in the world now? Can we end up somehow with more nature with greater amount of biodiversity than we did previously? And that's what nature positive is about. It's about saying, Can you start to halt the decline of biodiversity loss globally, reverse it and get to the stage where biodiversity is increasing against a lot of different metrics? And for me, if we're able to do that, then that's what I would say is nature recovery. Okay,

stephen thomas: 2:41

that's fascinating to hear. One question I was to have about, you know, just the phrase nature recovery, and it's interesting, how you related to nature positivity, but it seems a very sort of human centric approach to, to nature, you know, I'm well aware that nature is going to be fine and has existed before humanity and after humanity. But the phrase nature recovery implies that nature is the one that's at fault. We're actually, you know, really, it's the it's human actions that need to change. Have you encountered any difficulties with those sort of terms, nature, recovery, nature positive, that, that, you know, that sort of turn the focus more on to nature's at fault, rather than actually looking at the human actions and the human supply chains?

Joseph Bull: 3:28

Yeah, it's an extreme point, I think you've got to look at the reason we conserve nature or try and achieve nature recovery, right. And, you know, one set of reasons we might try and achieve natural recoveries because or the prevention species extinctions, or whatever it might be, is because we feel some kind of moral obligation or moral duty to do so. But I think at the end of the day, a lot of the reasons we talk about preventing biodiversity loss about achieving nature recovery, is, is because of people, right? It is necessarily a human centred approach. And then it's about the relationship between humans and the world we live in, and how can we make sure that we continue to have an environment that's stable and provides the kind of underpinning services that human society needs to exist? At the end of the day, image conservation involves a lot of value judgments about what we see as important biodiversity. And what we see is the right kind of biodiversity if you like. So once you get beyond any kind of moral arguments for conserving species, of which I think there are some I think that's important. At the end of the day, the whole kind of enterprise of nature conservation, I think has to be tied to people and the environment that people live in. Because that's really why a lot of the reason for doing what we do so yeah, I think it's an interesting challenge to say is nature recovery, too much of an anthropogenic focused argument. But I think at the end of the day, it's possible to have both a non human related motivation for conserving nature, as well as saying, well, actually, we're doing it partly to benefit people.

stephen thomas: 4:53

Yeah, that's very interesting. Give me some food for thought there and certainly your talk that you gave us are one thing I loved about it is it is it made me more positive about some of the schemes that are in place for things like biodiversity net gain, or which, you know, they're they're always kind of problems, but I sort of detected a no optimism behind everything that you were kind of saying. And do you think it's fair to say that you, you know, you're you have an optimistic outlook towards nature positivity, niche recovery? And given that, you know, before working in this field, you know, if you look at all the graphs and all the data, things are undoubtedly bad. And by most arguments getting worse, so and kind of how, how do you manage to if you know, first of all, are you optimistic? And then secondly, if you are, how, how do you manage to kind of keep that optimism, within your work and within your outlook, given everything that's happening?

Joseph Bull: 5:54

Yeah, so first of all, yes, I am optimistic. Absolutely. I'm very optimistic. But I'm optimistic. And I like to see proof that things are gonna work, right. So I'm not I'm not hopelessly optimistic. I'm not kind of I don't want to be unrealistic, right. And so when I look at the kind of things and we look at the kind of problems we look at, so nature positive as a challenge, can organisations can economies be nature positive? I think there's, of course they can, of course, it's possible, based on the analysis that we can do, but also it's going to be hard. And there's, you know, certain things that we have to do to get to there that are going to be quite challenging. So, yes, I'm optimistic, even though I know, there's plenty of challenges to turning around the the ongoing biodiversity climbs declines that we see. I think I wouldn't say it's completely accurate to say that, you know, everything's just things getting worse. I think, even though biodiversity globally, continues to be in decline. I think we see the, you know, the seeds germinating have some degree of positive outcomes from the impacts while the conservation work we do. And I think certainly, if you look at analyses, which consider the counterfactual, you know, what would have happened to global species and habitat loss? If we hadn't had any conservation efforts, then you see, actually, some of those losses have been slowed down, some of those losses have been in some cases halted. There are species that wouldn't be rounded up for conservation efforts, right. So I think for a start, you can say that, in some ways, we've certainly started to slow the rate of biodiversity loss, whether we're going quickly enough as another thing, but we certainly started to slow it. There have been other analyses that are in papers that look at global human footprints and economic developments. And you know, the extent to which that's tied inexorably to biodiversity loss, and have shown some decoupling to some extent, you know, started showing that it's possible to have economic development ongoing without that being directly correlated with biodiversity loss. So that's a good thing. That's an encouraging thing. And then on a more project by project basis, on an anecdotal basis, you see, certain projects, which have relatively positive outcomes, again, showing that it's possible, right? So an example I'd point to recently is a big paper published about the bit one of the big mines in Madagascar, which was trying to seek no net loss of forest cover. So no net loss of forest cover, meaning it had some forest clearance as part of the mining project. But that was accompanied by measures to halt deforestation elsewhere across Madagascar. And some of the most robust statistical analyses I've seen of those kind of projects in this Nature paper that was published last year, show that they think it's on track to be successful. So they're managing to achieve there's no net loss of deforestation alongside a big mining project. And, you know, big mining projects unnecessarily if we want renewable energy technologies, if we want batteries if we want computers, right. So, you know, this kind of thing is, to me part of the ongoing transition towards a more sustainable economy. And projects like that anecdotally shown this is potentially this kind of thing can work. I gave an example in my talk as well, of work we looked at with us wetlands, and again, the examples from one of our papers from from just a couple of years ago. In that case, we didn't do a proper causation analysis. So we weren't actually showing that the policy and legislation put in place to prevent wetland losses, was actually directly responsible for slowing the rate of wetland losses, but it certainly correlates with it. So you see that there's this kind of effort to achieve wetland to save wetlands across America, and that, that the rate of wetland loss is substantially slowed down since that law was put in place. So, again, I'm optimistic. I know there's a lot of things that are gonna be very challenging if we want to get towards a world where we're mitigating climate change, where we're meeting the Paris Agreement, where we're slowing down loss of biodiversity and where we're seeing eventually some form of nature recovery, like those things are very hard to do. But then they're definitely not impossible, and I definitely see the first shoots of some recovery in some of the literature.

stephen thomas: 9:54

That's great to hear. It's really refreshing. It's really warming. And also just having this kind of calm concrete examples out there. But again, it's not it's not perfect, but it's, it's very easy, I think sort of, on the outside and listening to different types of media just to sort of hear the repeated message of doom. And there is a lot of doom out there. But actually, you know, things are happening. And I think, you know, when I hear people like you talk, you know, we have the knowledge, we have the tools, we have the techniques, the implementation is often very hard, involving, you know, diverse political and governance mechanisms that are way above my capacity to deal with, but the fact that people like you and your colleagues are sort of engaging with them is really heartening. Can you talk just a bit more about actually, you know, some of the projects that you're currently working on, I know that they might not be directly linked to recovery, you know, you're in climate change biology, but but what's the, what are the projects that you're currently finding fascinating for you, personally, and for the for the team of researchers that you work with?

Joseph Bull: 10:56

Yeah, so we're working on a couple of projects. I guess I'll start with a couple of the ones that are more the nature, positive nature recovery types, type things. So we have done a series of projects with the University of Oxford that some of the work was published last year in nature, and that looks at the universities as a large organisation, you know, what are the biodiversity impacts? How can we mitigate those and how can we contribute towards a nature positive world a world in which nature is recovering. So it's really exciting to continue that work and see that lead helped lead to the establishment of a niche positives, niche positive universities Alliance, so about 500 universities around the world are banding together to work on niche positive solutions for nature recovery, we're working with a couple of different organisations, particularly for example, in agriculture, you know, looking at agricultural supply chains, and trying to understand how to quantify the biodiversity impacts of those and how to, again, achieve biodiversity games through different agricultural practices with the most supply chains we're looking at. One thing that's quite interesting at the moment is looking at a range of broadcast organisations, Media and Broadcast who are trying to understand their impacts. The negative impacts on biodiversity again, a lot of that is through the supply chains, but also actually downstream. So the impacts of products and how people consume them, whether that's newspapers or streaming or something like that. And interestingly, that can have both positive and negative impacts, because obviously, some of these organisations do a huge amount of work to raise awareness of the natural world and biodiversity conservation and the importance of it. So a range of different organisations we're working with on those kind of projects around impacts and how to move eventually towards nature recovery, or supporting nature recovery. I could also say one of the big projects, or two of the big projects we're working on at the moment, which are a bit more kind of applied conservation, if you like. One is all around the Aral Sea region in US Pakistan and Kazakhstan, particularly as Pakistan, which is one of the you know, talking about cause for optimism, that Roc is one of the biggest localised environmental disasters of the last 50 years. It's the loss of an entire Sea and the collapse of the relevant ecosystems and impacts on human health. So we're working with a set of different organisations there to try and push for protection of remaining wildlife to push for development of initiatives around eco tourism and initiatives around reducing the impacts of industrial activity in that region. So combining you know, how do you achieve nature recovery in the most challenging possible case studies situations, with benefits for people and working with industry and government? So that's another example. I think it's quite a nice practical example of nature uncovering the challenges that are involved. And then finally, I would just point to a project we have across Europe, which is all about forest restoration. And how do we achieve forest restoration projects in a way that not only sequestered carbon, but also supports biodiversity conservation and nature recovery across Europe through forests. But interestingly, how you a big part of the work we're doing now is how you actually fund that, how do you pay for that? And what are the financial mechanisms that allow us to sustainably not only reforest in the first place and restore forests, but also then to maintain those forests there on the landscape into the future? So quite a series of different projects that ultimately are all based around tactically speaking, how do we how do we move towards nature recovery in different scenarios?

stephen thomas: 14:13

It sounds great. I'm a big fan of forest maintenance, I was doing some tree planting on the weekend and I'm always aware that tree planting is the easy bit that everyone turns out for. But really what we need is tree management tree maintenance tree you know, get you know, planting the trees isn't really great for car but not awesome for biodiversity but keeping them alive for 10 to 30 years is really what what can make a difference. I'm just actually personally interested in is Pakistan and when when you go to the LLC and you see a place where there's been you know complete nature collapse. Do you see signs of adaptation mean what what happens in there we have such a sort of ecosystem collapse, you know, other this flora and fauna start to adapt or I mean obviously you have mass loss of biodiversity and I guess of abundance. as well. But does nature kind of find a way to sustain itself? What kind of things do you see there?

Joseph Bull: 15:06

Yeah, I think to some extent nature moves on, doesn't it? I mean, the Aral Sea is a challenging example, because you've got an entire landscape scale system that has collapsed because the scenes disappeared. So it's, it's a lot harder to imagine Nature recovery in the sense of going back to what was there before. Now, it's not impossible for the Aral Sea to return. But it seems like it'd be really quite challenging, not you know, practically and physically as well as, as well as politically and socially and so forth. And economically, so. So it's very challenging example, but what you see in that case is the creation of a new desert. So now they've got a new desert, which is starting to develop its own specific kind of system. Because a lot of the kind of the native plants that spread from nearby areas that never were under the water or not recently, are starting to kind of spread and dispersed into that newly created desert, which is essentially a blank canvas for a whole new eco desert ecosystem to emerge. So you're seeing a lot of plants and wildlife kind of starting to colonise that former seabed, and create what's a new system called the the arid desert. Now, what's interesting partly is that it's a bit of a refuge for a number of species, partly because it's so inaccessible and hard to get to. And partly because it was off limits for a long time, big parts of the format of the seabed. It's now no longer the case, which is partly why we're working on this project to protect it. But as a result, it's essentially been a refuge for some time for wildlife. So there's lots of wildlife species, animal species, bird species, other taxa that are of conservation interest that have used that area as a bit of a stronghold to stay safe from, you know, poaching and other challenges. So you do see, you know, the nature kind of adapting, basically, and finding a way to kind of work. I mean, nature just works with what it's given, doesn't it?

stephen thomas: 16:55

I find it I find it fascinating is like the, you know, the Chernobyl example of you know, even within mass destruction and sort of loss of life. And actually, there are all kinds of winners in a way. And it's given us that hard thing to kind of quantify. I mean, it's a disaster, but it's good for some species, and there's some good in there and kind of how do you balance that out? And like you say, it's kind of it's moving on. And I think there's always that tension between conservation and trying to protect what we have and the sort of in the UK, maybe like, some rare chalk streams, or, you know, and accepting that some areas are gonna get warmer. And actually, maybe there's an argument for bringing in non native species because they're going to flourish and you know, things will kind of colonise. But uh, yeah, I find that tension is interesting. And certainly the work you've done and use Becker sounds sounds absolutely fascinating.

Joseph Bull: 17:41

Well, I think, wow, it's, it's, it's interesting. And it's, in some ways, there's some positive stories to tell there. In the case of Blackstone and the Aral Sea, you know, it is a very thin silver lining to a very dark cloud. Yeah, in terms of the species benefits that have been gained versus the collapse of relevant ecosystems. But I'm really, you know, you talk about optimism or the need for optimism or not, I mean, for me, it's a case of saying, in that case, let's not pretend a lot of very, you know, problematic things haven't happened here, from, from an environmental point of view, from a human point of view, human health point of view. I mean, from an ecosystem point of view that there's there's a lot of chat very, you know, terrible things that have happened to that ecosystem. But the answer to that isn't throw our hands up in despair and say, when it's all over, the answer is to say, well, what can you do about it? You know, how do we move forward from here? Because there is a way back to that same ecosystem? Can we restore that ecosystem? Or do we have to embrace a novel ecosystem, given what we've got? And what are the benefits? who the winners, the winners and losers in that novel ecosystem? And how do we, you know, work together to facilitate that, facilitate that in a way that's good for nature, and supports nature recovery to something, but also is, you know, consistent with people who live there and what you know, what they want, and what they expect to know what benefits that so that's for me, the way forward is to say, that's not there's not despair. Yeah, that's working. Well, we've got

stephen thomas: 19:02

it's a great perspective. There's no you know, there's no barren landscape, even you know, when glaciers retreat and there's just bare rock, you know, within a few years, lichens and you know, like, colonisation seems to be happening all the time. Even if you know, there is a loss of grey abundance and you know, these disasters, it's kind of like, sort of looking, looking at the bigger picture. Just want to end I think, with maybe some personal reflections on I guess, kind of what nature means to you, like, what are the natural environments that you feel most at home and then in the UK, or when you kind of travel? You know, what, what's, what's your favourite place in nature to sort of hang out in? Yeah, it's

Joseph Bull: 19:38

good question that I, to be honest, I you know, I grew up in the UK, we moved around a lot. We lived abroad a little bit, but mainly I grew up in the UK. And since you know, as much my adult life has been in the UK, and so there'll always be a place I think, in my heart for kind of coastal British environments. You know, I've always loved being on the coast. And I think particularly swimming in the sea where there's kind of an Using natural habitats, you know, whether that's kind of underwater, kind of kelp forests off the southwest, or, you know, kind of the chalk cliffs near where I grew up and so forth. You know, it's the thing of the UK, we don't have many kind of unmodified natural habitats clearly, but I was there always be a special place me for kind of coastal environments. And I've enjoyed, you know, when I've travelled down to coastal environments to now the Aral Sea, with that coastal environment or not, I don't know. But, obviously, that's where I've done a lot of my work for the last, you know, more than 10 years now. I think. And something else that I've always enjoyed is is actually kind of, even though I've done, they've been involved in projects that involve forests, you know, proper, dense kind of forests, whether it's in the tropics, or the European forest project I've talked about, and I do obviously love forests, whether it's in the UK or elsewhere, I kind of always feel a bit like deserts are quite hard done by I think, you know, the word the way we talk about deserts, not as biologists the way that we perceived as it. And the way people talk about conservation, and which habitats of priorities. And I think deserts are often talked about in a kind of a, you know,

stephen thomas: 21:05

we have to hold them right there bad things. Well, yeah, but then them at bay and well, you know, sort of stopped them from from being there, or kind of we want to recreate the desert or get rid of them, you know,

Joseph Bull: 21:14

yeah, exactly. And then, you know, there are some instances in which that's kind of appropriate to talk about preventing desertification. But I think when you've got natural occurring deserts, or dry lands, or kind of extensive shrub lands, you know, you kind of, they're often seen as kind of low biodiversity and not priorities. But I think actually, that's not really fair. And so I've enjoyed working in desert and dry land systems, which is partly why I've enjoyed working in Central Asia and respect Stan so long. And I would really love to kind of contribute towards the broader effort to not talk about places, you know, as deserts in the negative sense. If you see an absence of life to say, Oh, it's a desert, because that's not fair on deserts does, it's actually really interesting ecosystems. So, so yeah, so that was a so for me, I think when I think about nature, I like to support you know, deserts and desert conservation and dry land conservation. But I think if we're getting down to personally, you know, what I've always wanted grown up with, I think I'll always have a place where coastal ecosystems and, and immediate offshore systems.

stephen thomas: 22:11

Thank you very much as ever, Professor Joseph, I am, I finished talking to you, and I feel uplifted, optimistic and really glad that you and your researchers and your team are out there dealing with these complex issues. I'm going to take a closer look at his best Pakistan and I think I'm going to take a look at some deserts and reflect on them a bit more. But thank you so much for your time today. And good luck with all your future research.

Joseph Bull: 22:35

Thanks, Steven. It's been a pleasure.

stephen thomas: 22:40

You've been listening to the nature recovery podcast with me Stephen Thomas. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone you know, you never know. You might get them interested in the wonderful field of data recovery. If you want to find out more about the activities of the leader whom Centre for nature recovery. You can find us on Twitter at Mitch recovery. Or you can visit our website for more information. That's www dot NATO recovery.ox.ac.uk Thanks so much for listening