Environment, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Regeneration, Sustainability, Nature, Politics, Circular Economy - One Planet Podcast 2021-2022

"The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology.https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology."The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

"Many of us are now aware that bees are in trouble due to manmade changes to the environment. Large-scale industrial agriculture, of course, means that often there are no floral resources over very large areas of farmland, and bees' flexibility in locating food sources of course can cope with that to some extent because they're very good at locating patches, but this ability only goes so far. Of course, if there are literally no flowers left or very few, then their learning ability won't help them very much.In addition, of course, there is very heavy usage of pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture. And these substances in many cases have been designed to be lethal or at least harmful to insects because they are meant to keep herbivores at bay. And of course often, even if insects don't eat the leaves, flower-visiting insects still get exposed to them in the contents of floral nectar or pollen. So they carry these poisons back to their hives, their nests, albeit perhaps in lower concentrations that they're available in the leaves, but they're still present at a level that's harmful to bees so that affects their navigation, that affects the health of their young. So these manmade changes have a huge impact on bees and this is typically measured in those bees that are least affected - that is honeybees.”Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology.http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto credit: Markus Scholz / Leopoldina

Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology."Many of us are now aware that bees are in trouble due to manmade changes to the environment. Large-scale industrial agriculture, of course, means that often there are no floral resources over very large areas of farmland, and bees' flexibility in locating food sources of course can cope with that to some extent because they're very good at locating patches, but this ability only goes so far. Of course, if there are literally no flowers left or very few, then their learning ability won't help them very much.In addition, of course, there is very heavy usage of pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture. And these substances in many cases have been designed to be lethal or at least harmful to insects because they are meant to keep herbivores at bay. And of course often, even if insects don't eat the leaves, flower-visiting insects still get exposed to them in the contents of floral nectar or pollen. So they carry these poisons back to their hives, their nests, albeit perhaps in lower concentrations that they're available in the leaves, but they're still present at a level that's harmful to bees so that affects their navigation, that affects the health of their young. So these manmade changes have a huge impact on bees and this is typically measured in those bees that are least affected - that is honeybees.”http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto credit: Markus Scholz / Leopoldina