Janetos Discusses Climate Change and Biodiversity on WGBH’s Greater Boston

Prof. Anthony Janetos, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor and Chair of the Department of Earth & Environment, was featured on WGBH’s Greater Boston where he discussed a recently released United Nations assessment report on the global state of biodiversity.

The report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds that about a million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, while human actions have “significantly altered” about three-quarters of the planet’s land-based environment and about two-thirds of its marine environment. The report also identifies and ranks the five largest drivers of change in nature: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species. The assessment recommends a wide range of sustainability actions across many sectors — including agriculture, marine systems, urban areas, energy, and finance — and highlights the importance of “integrated management and cross-sectoral approaches.”

During the segment, Prof. Janetos and David Cash, dean of UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, discussed the findings of the report and possible ways forward.

“This is not just a matter of a million species. This is also a matter of the ecological and environmental foundation that actually generates wealth, agricultural productivity, food security — and we’ve put it in danger,” Janetos said. “The influx of renewable energy — solar energy and wind energy — into the energy system is the kind of ‘transformative change’ that this report is talking about.”

The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is the most comprehensive assessment of its kind, based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years.

“The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said Sir Robert Watson, Chair of the IPBES. “The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global. Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”

In 2016, Watson delivered the annual Pardee Center Distinguished Lecture, where he reflected on his three decades of experience conducting integrated scientific assessments like the recent IPBES report. Watch his full lecture here.