A city boy captivated by nature
Morimoto: Were you interested in living creatures from childhood, Dr. Pearse?
Dr. Pearse: I was born in Bristol (*). It’s a beautiful city and I would never say a bad thing about my beloved hometown. But it’s an urban environment and as a child, all I knew was buildings.
During my childhood, I have one vivid memory of going hiking as a Boy Scout. When we went to the countryside, I saw trees and fields, and when I closed my eyes and listened carefully, it was completely quiet — no sound of cars at all. We slept outdoors and woke up to birdsong. It was such a fresh experience for me.
All I wanted to do was go somewhere with more nature than England and see as much of it as I could. I ended up in this profession because after witnessing the beauty of nature, I wanted to learn more about it and understand how everything functions together.
(*) Bristol is a port city in the West of England. Including adjacent areas, its estimated population of 720,000 makes it the eighth most populous city in the U.K.
Morimoto: And that has led to ICL’s policy briefing note, showing how diverse species have evolved and how the diversity affects ecosystem functions, right?
Dr. Pearse: Yes. The main conclusion from our research was that the more biodiverse ecosystems are, the better they do everything. For example, if you want to fight climate change by growing trees, don’t just plant trees, but grow a diverse set of species within a forest. This makes the forest more resilient to natural disasters and fires, and it stores carbon faster. In other words, investing in diverse ecosystems gives you a greater return.
Taylor: It seems obvious that we should plant diverse species and that diversity brings benefits in many different ways, doesn’t it? But the thing is, government policymakers need to communicate this to non-experts who might just think that it’s good to plant many trees. That’s why it’s important to have policy recommendations based on scientific evidence.
The researchers, from left, Yoshitaka Morimoto, Paul Taylor, Dr. Will Pearse and Akinori Nishide, enjoy a lively exchange of views on biodiversity and culture.
Don’t just plant trees but restore diverse ecosystems
Dr. Pearse: Most existing policies have focused on planting any kind of trees. In fact, it’s quite rare in countries around the world to consider what species of trees they’re planting. And it’s even rarer — I might say it’s hardly done at all — to consider what grows and lives beneath these trees, or to think about what we should do in places where forests wouldn’t naturally exist.
Indeed, trees are very important because they store a lot of carbon dioxide. However, we forget that in some places where we want to plant trees, they simply won’t grow well. We also forget that ecosystems provide benefits beyond carbon sequestration that reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide — some even more crucial roles, like supporting pollinators that help produce our food more efficiently.
One of the achievements of our research was quantifying these long-known benefits. It’s extremely useful to be able to precisely estimate the actual increases in benefits from biodiversity — increases in pollination, increases in flood protection. You see, even when we generally agree, it would not be possible to put biodiversity on the table for discussion by just having tree huggers like myself saying “we love nature.” Therefore, I believe that it’s important to have solid evidence and quantification.
Nishide: In Japan, when it comes to biodiversity conservation, we’ve maintained healthy “satoyama (village forests located near human habitats)” copses by cutting down old trees and thinning the forests, and have created habitats for diverse species. Rather than individually consuming the income from selling these trees as firewood or building materials, villagers would put this money into community funds for maintenance of the copses. This created a virtuous circle, with each part of the system increasing the beneficial effect of the next. It’s a great example of a sustainable natural environment. Here, human intervention has actually supported biodiversity and ecosystems. This was part of our history and tradition.
Dr. Pearse: Ah, I see. That’s similar to what we call coppicing in Britain, where we regularly cut and allow oak woodlands to regenerate.
Paul Taylor conducts research on future sustainability technologies at Hitachi.
What happens when we lose biodiversity?
Dr. Pearse:There’s a lot of emphasis now on mixed-use landscapes and shade-grown agriculture, where you don’t have such intense agriculture. This provides some of the broader benefits of biodiversity, like pollinators, carbon sequestration and flood defenses, while food can be grown and resources produced that can be used for other things. I think that has a lot of promise. It shows that we had been doing this for generations, but only recently stopped. Sometimes it’s good to listen to our grandparents. Maybe they did things in a certain way because it was sustainable, allowing them to continue their business year after year.
Nishide: How would the loss of biodiversity affect our everyday lives?
Dr. Pearse:The impact would be serious, affecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and how we protect homes from flooding. The biodiversity crisis is such a critical issue because we depend on biodiversity for everything essential to life. If this crisis continues, it will threaten our survival. That’s why we simply cannot ignore this problem.
To address this, we can use biodiversity in our fight against climate change. For example, we can secure more space where diverse species thrive, and that would help us store carbon dioxide and produce food more efficiently. For this to happen, we need to nurture more diverse ecosystems and spread their benefits worldwide, and to every household. This will help us tackle the issue.
We must remember this wherever we are. Biodiversity isn’t just found in distant forests or coral reefs. You can bring biodiversity into your workplace and living environment. And you can spread its benefits everywhere — things like cooling shade, pollinating insects and positive effects on mental health.
Akinori Nishide develops models to evaluate the economic value of ecosystems at Hitachi.
Pathways to biodiversity recovery
Nishide: I’ve heard about researchers working on rewilding to restore biodiversity. It seems like a long-term process. This means we need to pass our knowledge on to the next generation, doesn’t it? In that sense, isn’t education crucial for biodiversity restoration?
Dr. Pearse: In addressing the climate crisis and biodiversity emergency, it’s critical for us to succeed over the next 20 years. Fortunately, we can make significant improvements right away.
Rewilding involves letting nature take over. In many cases, it allows the ecosystem to manage itself by reintroducing large herbivores, rather than relying on human management. It’s about restoring the processes that used to function in that ecosystem and letting nature do the work.
One example of research that my lab was involved in is the Knepp Estate (*) in the U.K. Through rewilding efforts, what was once biodiversity-depleted land that had been intensively farmed was transformed in just 20 years. It has become one of the most beautiful and biodiverse places in the country, capable of sustaining populations of endangered species. It doesn’t take that long. Since rewilding relies on natural processes, it’s a highly cost-effective approach.
(*) Knepp Estate is a rewilding project covering approximately 1,400 hectares of farmland in southern England. In 2001, the estate shifted away from intensive farming, introducing free-roaming longhorn cattle to promote the recovery of ecosystems, including soil and insect populations.
However, rewilding is not the only solution. In particular, it’s impossible to rewild urban ecosystems — if we did, they would no longer be urban areas. Urban ecosystems need to be actively managed by human hands. When people become involved in such management, it’s beneficial for their health and provides opportunities to learn about biodiversity.
Through such educational activities, we need to convey to people that restoring biodiversity is not difficult, and it offers a very high return on investment. We need to shift people’s mindset. Rather than seeing nature as something complex and distant, we need to help them understand that nature can assist us, do the work on our behalf and is something that can be within our reach.
This kind of education is actually much easier than one might think. In fact, younger generations and children tend to have a deep love of nature, don’t they? It’s us, the adult generation, who have been led to forget our affection for nature and have been taught to fear it. So, I believe the first step for us is to re-educate ourselves and ensure the next generation does not develop the same biases that we have.
The rich natural surroundings of Imperial College London’s campus are a perfect setting for exploring the relationship between biodiversity and culture.
(In collaboration with Imperial College London)
Related Link
Profile
Will Pearse, PhD
Reader in Evolutionary Ecology,
Imperial College London
Dr. Pearse is a Reader in Evolutionary Ecology at Imperial College London, where his lab develops new tools to better measure and forecast biodiversity and human health to help drive societal change. His research focuses on developing new computational methods to understand how species' evolutionary history drives their present-day interactions. He enjoys working with companies (such as Hitachi) and charities (such as the EDGE of Extinction program) to apply insights from his lab's research and so support nature and human-wellbeing.
Paul Taylor, PhD
Laboratory Manager,
Sustainability,
European Research and Development, Hitachi
Dr. Taylor studied environmental science and received his PhD for developing statistical models to assess the quality of measurement in environmental surveys and associated risks from misclassification error. His subsequent career as a sustainability specialist for corporates has spanned various industry sectors and sustainability topics, including carbon accounting for products and supply chains, responsible sourcing for metals used in electric vehicles and innovation in the mining sector. His role for Hitachi research and development focuses on innovating future technologies in sustainability, such as reducing CO2 emissions, improving the lifecycle impacts of batteries or protecting and utilizing nature for climate adaptation.
Akinori Nishide, PhD
Chief Researcher,
European Research & Development Centre,
Hitachi Europe, Ltd.
Dr. Nishide is a chief researcher at Hitachi Europe, Ltd., focusing on developing monitoring, reporting, verifying metrics on biodiversity and models to evaluate an economic value of biological ecosystem as a complex system. He has studied condensed matter physics and has joined the R&D of Hitachi, Ltd. in 2010, then, received his PhD for studying the effect of the quasiparticle on the electric state in the thermoelectric material. On the occasion of studying at the Max Planck institute in 2019, he has started the study on the complex system.
Yoshitaka Morimoto, Ph.D.
Deputy Lab Manager of Sustainability Laboratory,
European Research & Development Centre,
Hitachi Europe, Ltd.
Dr. Morimoto joined the Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi, Ltd. in 2011 after completing his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Since then, he has been involved in the R&D of optical measurement techniques, such as defect detection for 2.5-D semiconductor stacking. After completing his MBA, he joined ERD as an expatriate. His current role focuses on customer co-creation for hydrogen technology to decarbonize the gas transmission and distribution sectors.
