Thoughts and lessons from Global Biodiversity Festival 2021

I had the opportunity to attend the Global Biodiversity Festival this year, a 72-hour online broadcast featuring conservationists, biologists, lawyers, citizen scientists, and students around the world, united to talk about science and conservation. Hats off to the organizers because it was so smoothly run and the moderators who were endlessly enthusiastic! Below, I will highlight the most important lessons I learned from attending this event.

The festival officially kicked off with an inspiring speech by the amazing KM Reyes from Indonesia, who called in from the field in Palawan. Her message was to put the indigenous people front and center when it comes to conservation. Not only are they the most efficient in safeguarding the world’s remaining natural resources, but they also have a deep connection with what they are protecting. It is part of their everyday landscape, traditional culture, and livelihood. And this message was echoed by many other speakers and is the recurring theme throughout the festival. It was mentioned many times that indigenous people make up 5% of the world’s population but are capable of protecting 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Placing them on the table where important environmental decisions are being made is key to simply making the right decisions. Not only that, we need to provide them with the basic conditions in which to work in the field. It was mentioned that rangers cannot defend the forest with an empty stomach. I could not agree more. The movies that depict rangers wearing camouflaged shirts and boots while working at their jobs are creating a skewed representation of reality. They don’t have shoes. And we are expecting them to defend against armed poachers. If there’s one thing that we must take away from this, is that we need to give more to these rangers and the local indigenous peoples who are on the frontlines protecting our precious nature. Here is one of many ways you can help: change.org/ouronehome.

Another recurring theme is the importance of collaboration. Justine Vaz from The Habitat Foundation pointed out an analogous story called the stone soup. This story starts with a couple of hungry travelers that arrived in a village. They started a fire and added some water and stones into a huge pot. Each passing villager asked what they were doing. They told them they were preparing a delicious stone soup, but it’s not quite ready yet, and would probably need a few more spices and vegetables to make its full potential. Over time, everyone helped a little and the soup was filled with a wide array of ingredients and was enjoyed by all. The moral of this story can be applied in conservation. No matter if you are the hungry travelers who planted the seed of collaboration, or the villager who provides a single shake of pepper, you have a role to play. Universities have the facilities to conduct high-quality research. Local communities have an army of citizen scientists that can collect important data in a landscape that they are familiar with. Environmental lawyers have a quiet power to protect nature. Scientists have the experience to design research projects to find out if a conservation method is working. All of us working together will always be better than us working alone.

I was most impressed by the speakers who see the problems in conservation and initiated real solutions that engaged and educated their local communities. Clarine Kigoli saw that the conservation data cycle is broken, where data is collected and entered into a database, but the data is not analyzed and the results not used to feedback into the decision-making process. She used the SMART tool to solve this problem in Kenya. Daniel Hayhow created the Tiny Forest citizen science project. Mercy Njobvu is a youth conservationist who shared her story of educating her community about the dangers of rabies that can be transmitted to humans from the saliva of animals. After receiving training from vets, she vaccinated feral dogs in her village in hopes to reduce the spread of this fatal virus. She encourages young conservationists who are listening to be courageous and to take the first step in making a change, and continue doing the work even though it can be difficult.

Environmental awareness was always on the top of the priority list when conservationists are discussing how to get people involved in conservation. It has been argued, however, that people who engage in these conservation-related activities and events are people who already care about the environment, and people who already know exactly how the world’s wild places are deteriorating. However, I felt that this festival was different. I find myself learning so many new things. I was inspired by real, sometimes ingenious, success stories, such as how the kākāpō recovery program in New Zealand used high tech monitoring tools to conserve a single species; and how Tim Gordon and his team played reef soundscapes using underwater speakers to increase the chance of reef fishes recruitment to a coral reef. I was empowered by the fierceness of how some landscapes are being protected, such as how the Perak Royal Belum State Park in Malaysia has around 120 rangers currently employed who are capable of catching illegal wildlife poachers in at most 3 to 4 days. I was also captivated by the gentleness of those who are nurturers and explorers. The Dracula Reserve encouraged young researchers in Ecuador who discovered many new species in their reserve. And the Bornean Sunbear Conservation Centre rehabilitates sunbears that have suffered from the illegal pet trade, including teaching young bear cubs how to forage, before releasing them back into the wild. I was baffled by what I still do not know about plastic pollution. Did you know that one wash in the washing machine can produce 700,000 microfibers? Some talks tickled my curiosity and left me hungry for the wild again. I knew that oysters are great at filtering nutrient-rich waters, but I did not know, before hearing from Celine Gamble, that they could live up to 15 to 20 years! I knew that sloths have a slow metabolism, but I did not know, before hearing from Lucy Houliston, that they take 30 days to digest one leaf!

I was inspired by all of these and more. After attending this festival, I felt compelled to get on my feet and fight the good fight.