Ep.71 Safeguarding the environment by enhancing biodiversity

Maria Rampa: Hi I’m Maria Rampa and welcome to this episode of Engineering Reimagined.

One lasting effect of the pandemic that you may not be aware of is that bird-watching has skyrocketed in popularity, with record numbers turning out in countries across the globe including Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia to explore the fascinating life of birds!

While this was initially attributed to people craving the outdoors during lockdowns, it’s also now a growing trend for nature-loving enthusiasts snapping a video for TikTok or pic for Instagram.

This surge in popularity is helping improve protection of bird populations and just one of the many ways that a greater understanding of our world’s rich biodiversity – and its connection with development – is on the increase.

In today’s episode of Engineering Reimagined, Aurecon’s Associate, Sustainable Systems, Jessica Holz, speaks with Paul Leader, Aurecon’s Hong Kong-based Market Director, Ecology and Biodiversity, and Hugh Possingham, former Queensland Chief Scientist and Vice President of Birdlife Australia, who is renowned for his work in conservation biology. All three are also avid bird watchers!

Jess, Hugh and Paul discuss the role that industry can play in calling for biodiversity targets, the resilience of nature and its ability to regenerate, especially through government initiatives, and the opportunity to use development to enhance, rather than degrade, biodiversity.

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Jessica Holz: Jessica Holz Thank you for being here, Hugh and Paul. And I'll start by pointing out that I'm wearing my Tawny Frogmouth earrings for the occasion, since we're going to discuss birds because I have them in my garden. So it's such a pleasure to be speaking to two highly credentialed biodiversity experts today, and I'm so excited to discuss nature, conservation and nature based solutions with you. To kick things off, Hugh, you have a really impressive CV and a goal to save as much biodiversity as possible. Could you please tell our listeners about what inspires you to do the work that you do?

Hugh Possingham: In some senses it's not a very intellectual answer, but I love biodiversity. That's it. I love the diversity of nature. I started birdwatching with my father when I was 10 years old. From being a birdwatcher, wanting to identify birds, I fell in love with whole ecosystems, plants, and then at about the age of 17, our favourite birdwatching spot was bulldozed in the Adelaide Hills, and I turned from being somebody interested in natural history to somebody who said, I just don't see why anybody should have the right to destroy such a complicated ecosystem and replace it with a crop of wheat, particularly in that case, in a landscape where only 2 per cent of the native vegetation was retained. So almost everything had been destroyed. And you go from an ecosystem with 150 plant species and 100 bird species to an ecosystem with two or three plant species and 10 bird species. And of course, that's not just birds and plants but mammals and insects and fungi and everything else. All that complexity and richness of life was destroyed. And so I’ve dedicated my life to try to minimise that. I’m not doing a very good job though.

Jessica Holz: I think you are. From what I've seen, you’re really contributing to that. And I feel your passion and have certainly seen similar things happen in my life. It's devastating. Paul, you have extensive experience in wetland habitat restoration and enhancement. So what inspired you to focus on this specific area? And what else would you like to tell us about your career?

Paul Leader: So like Hugh, I think I entered into this sphere through an obsessive love of birdwatching and birds and habitats. I was seven years old, when one of my relatives gave me a birdwatching book and I started identifying the birds in our back garden in rural Essex. And from there, went on hikes with my dad, down to the local river And then eventually got into a ringing group in the UK – bird banding, bird ringing – which has been an important part of my life, and introduced me to a whole new world, a whole new group of people. I spent a year on a very remote island in the Irish Sea on a bird observatory when I was 20. After that, I was a little bit lost with the world and headed to Hong Kong for a bit of adventure and thought I would just enjoy a city life, having spent a year on a remote island and discovered that Hong Kong, while it's a city, also has amazing biodiversity, I very quickly visited the Mai Po Nature reserve. And I started doing voluntary work there immediately after I arrived. And I was just astonished by the wetland birds there, the number and variety of, especially shorebirds, and got involved with the bird banding program for shorebirds there.

Jessica Holz: So you are both bird enthusiasts, which is wonderful, as am I. And Hugh you are Vice President of BirdLife Australia, which is an amazing organisation and every year I love to do the Aussie Bird Count with my kids. It's a highlight of our year. Could you tell us about your work with BirdLife Australia?

Hugh Possingham: I sit on the board. The work of BirdLife is exciting. They've got 70 staff doing bird conservation and advocacy all over Australia. And of course Australia is a remarkable continent and a remarkable country. There's only one other country in the world with more endemic birds, and that's Indonesia. We’re number two in terms of endemic birds in the planet. Number three is the Philippines. Our region has the biggest concentrations of endemic birds and bird diversity of anywhere on the planet. So BirdLife's mission is now entirely conservation focussed. We support the science. We support citizen science. The big Aussie Bird Count is all about engaging more and more Australians in bird watching. And the fact is bird watching in Australia, the number of people who are interested in it, it's probably doubled or tripled in the last five years. It's been a huge renaissance.

Bird organisations are very important because they're usually the most powerful conservation organisations in many countries. There is no Mammal Life Australia. There is no Frog Life Australia. There was the small group looking after threatened plants. There's a thousand threatened plants in Australia and they've got a budget the tenth the size of BirdLife Australia. So we often are the voice of all conservation, particularly at the species and the habitat level. And we can see that all around the world, particularly in places like the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, where the birding groups are very powerful organisations for conservation.

Jessica Holz: I hope the birds are increasing in number like the bird watchers that you visit.

Hugh Possingham: Unfortunately not. No. There's nothing particularly good about the trajectory of the conservation at the global scale. There are small success stories. We have saved lots of things around the world, but on average the trajectory is downwards. We have a thing called the Threatened Species Index in Australia and that tracks the fate of a lot of Australia's threatened birds. The last two years is the first time it's gone up a little bit for two years in a row. But that's the first time in 30 years that it's gone up a little bit. In general, 60 per cent of the abundance of Australia's threatened birds has disappeared.

Jessica Holz: Yeah, that's a really disheartening statistic. So, Paul, you're one of the leading experts on habitat in East Asia. They are requirements in East Asia for native fauna. Could you tell us about your work in this area?

Paul Leader: It echoes what Hugh's been saying about how, generally, bird populations are in decline. Hong Kong is no different to anywhere else. And one of the things that we haven't mentioned yet and the elephant in the room always is climate change. We've got this parallel double whammy, so to speak, of habitat loss and climate change and whilst we’re making some gains in some areas of habitats where we do have the resources and the space and the expertise to manage habitats better and those improve, there's still this huge background of climate change and the ever increasing human global population. But, as conservationists, ecologists, we have to at some level be optimistic because otherwise we just give up. And one of the things that I've enjoyed about my experience, in especially Hong Kong, is working on projects that have worked.

The Lok Ma Chau Spur Line, I’ve been working on that for 25 years now. It was required to mitigate for the loss of a new station and railway connecting the Hong Kong rail system to the system in China. So, we have a 36 hectare mitigation wetland which is right on the border with Shenzhen. I mean, it's astonishing. There's literally on the other side of a small river, there's one of the biggest populated cities in the world. It's 25 million people. And the nearest buildings from that are literally hundreds of metres away from this mitigation wetland. Now, what's amazing about it is because it's on the edge of the Deep Bay wetland system, and it was already wetlands, it was commercial fish ponds. We took it over and we diversified the habitats. We managed it specifically for wildlife, we controlled the disturbance, etc. It's just incredible. We've had a fivefold increase in the number of key species, and that's sustainable over many, many years. So it's a great example of how development, with the right resources and the right expertise and the long term investment in a site like that, can actually be a positive. And this is where, the whole nature positive conversation comes from and how in so many projects and in so many examples of the management of green open spaces where we are excluding or not optimising the biodiversity value of these sites.

Jessica Holz: And that leads really well into next question about biodiversity loss. We are seeing the sixth mass extinction. We're seeing devastating levels of biodiversity loss. So, Hugh, could you please give an explanation about what biodiversity is? And why it's important?

Hugh Possingham: Biodiversity is just short for biological diversity, which is the diversity of all life. Most people, when they think about that, they'll think about species diversity and they'll start thinking about the numbers of species. Roughly speaking, there's 10 million species on the planet, but most of those nobody will ever see because they're microscopic fungi or bacteria or tiny beetles and spiders. And that's what sustains life on the planet. And sadly, best estimates are the current rate of extinction is 1000 times what it would be under normal circumstances. So we're losing species at a very high rate. An interesting paper just came out in Australia by John Woinarski and Jess Marsh and colleagues on invertebrates. They estimate that 10,000 invertebrates in Australia – insects, spiders, crustaceans and so forth have gone extinct. Only one of which was described. So we're losing a lot of diversity we don't know a lot about, largely through habitat destruction. And to a certain extent in the future, it's probably going to be climate change destroying species. So why should we be worried about it? I think there are two things really that are the biggest existential crises to humanity.

One, we know very well, which is climate change. And probably the second biggest one to humanity is this erosion of biodiversity. 95 per cent of people still do not realise how huge a threat it is. Biodiversity loss, it's even more delayed and as diffuse as climate change. And so it's very difficult for people to respond to that threat because it doesn't affect them that day. If the Tawny Frogmouths, your earrings, if they disappear from my suburb, there's a minor loss of amenity and people will start to wonder where the Tawny Frogmouths have gone. But it's not the collapse of civilisation, but actually when you add all these things up. Agriculture gets affected, forestry gets affected. Food and fibre across the entire world. Every part of our mental and physical health gets affected. Air quality gets affected, but the delays are enormous. So we’re still struggling to get everybody on board about the impact of biodiversity. But I will also guarantee, by 2050, people will be saying this is the biggest thing and why did we take so long to act? Why were we so slow when people as early as the 60s and 70s, people like EO Wilson and so forth? Paul Ehrlich? When they made it very clear how important this was, why didn't the global community act more quickly?

Jessica Holz: So, Paul, how about in Hong Kong and in cities? Could you tell us a bit about the importance of biodiversity in these highly modified, urbanised landscapes?

Paul Leader: Hong Kong's tiny really, 1000km² but is 60 per cent green open space because it's very hilly. If you ask anybody to envisage Hong Kong, we all know what they're going to think of, it’s hundreds of high rises. But you have access to beautiful green open spaces. And Hong Kong supports an amazing variety of biodiversity – 570 birds – which for a thousand hectares is enormous. And many of those are, of conservation importance. It's 250 butterfly species, 130 dragonflies. So biodiversity is important in cities for many, many, many reasons. And there's so many missed opportunities; it drives me mad. You need ecologists involved. People always seem to think that landscape architects can resolve all of these issues by planting it and making it look nice. But you have to incorporate the biodiversity and the ecological functions that could potentially be missed. And really, it's only, ecologists, of course, who understand that.

Jessica Holz: So I'd like to talk a little bit about the Olympics next. Hugh and I are both based in Brisbane, which will be the host of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. We know that sport needs nature, all sports leverage, natural features, systems and processes in one way or another, and even sports that are held in purpose built stadiums are still dependent on the natural environment for training and rely on ecosystem services that support all life, such as clean air and water and pollination to produce nutritious food. Despite their reliance on nature, sports events, if not planned well, damage nature and mega events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games consume vast amounts of resources and can damage local natural features, biodiversity and ecosystems. So the Brisbane 2032 legacy strategy Elevate does address this issue and it includes an aspiration to protect and regenerate habitat and biodiversity. The strategy references nature-based solutions and green infrastructure. So. Hugh, are there any risks and opportunities that stand out to you?

Hugh Possingham: There's enormous opportunities. As you say, sport and nature go often hand in hand. Much of sport is an outdoor activity, relies on nature. I've seen in my interactions so far on one consultation around the Olympics, there is a strong focus on sustainability, using recyclable materials, minimising the carbon footprint, making everything as renewable and sustainable as possible. The conversations around biodiversity I think are still a little bit immature and fraught. A lot of the companies involved in this space struggle with the biodiversity side. And exactly what is the direct impact of any event on biodiversity? So it isn't just look, we just destroyed some trees and vegetation to put up a stadium. It's all the other things. Where did all the food come from with that. Was that deforestation free beef that you were just eating there, the weightlifters no doubt require vast quantities of to lift the weights that they do? Maybe, maybe not. Are we checking all those things? By 2030, the state of biodiversity in Queensland should be where it was in 2020 and going up. So, it's gone down since 2020.

We have to reverse that decline and then it has to be back to 2020 levels by 2030 and by 2050 it has to be completely restored. So the Olympics is actually a very good time because by 2032 we should prove that we are better than we were in 2020 in terms of biodiversity across the Olympic state, which is Queensland. I think it's our job to hold them to account and actually say, like any business. The catering businesses, they have to make a profit. The carbon businesses, they have to prove that this is carbon neutral. It's all about proper accounting. And those accounting systems need to be put in place now and then the actions need to be taken to prove that we’re nature positive by 2032. Even simple things like the path of the marathon.

Brisbane can be quite hot even in the winter sun. Why don't you just line that with native tree species now, 42km of native trees and make sure that these runners run in the shade. Well trees take a while to grow. They grow pretty quickly in southeast Queensland. You could be planting those trees now. That would be somewhat symbolic, but it would also be something that is actually a legacy that you have a running track that could be run in the shade. Even wetlands, which are probably one of the best places to get big bang for your buck in terms of restoration of ecosystems. It's still a decade long process to get full recovery of wetland ecosystems. Again, that could be happening now in southeast Queensland.

Jessica Holz: So on the topic of projects I believe that we can consider biodiversity through the entire lifecycle of projects from planning and approvals through to design, construction and operation and eventually decommissioning or deconstruction. Paul, many people think of biodiversity as being important at the beginning of developments, and especially just in terms of project siting, but how else could it be considered across a precinct, a city or region in terms of project lifecycle?

Paul Leader: At the start of a project you either upgrade some wetland habitats or you plant a forest area. But obviously you can't just plant these, modify these and then walk away. You have to manage these for generations, forever really. If I go back to the Lok Ma Chau example, because that's part of an environmental permit, MTRC, the Hong Kong Railway Corporation has to basically manage that for the lifecycle of the railway. So they have this long-term commitment to that, and that obviously should be replicated elsewhere.

Jessica Holz: So Hugh, this leads well into the Marxan map that you co-developed, and I understand that this is a world leading conservation planning tool that can help fundamentally change how decision makers use technology for conservation. Could you please describe what it is and how it works?

Hugh Possingham: Marxan has various iterations, it's about 30 years old or she's about 30 years old. It's a woman, Marxan, it's a tool that Ian Baur, one of my PhD students and I developed in the early 1990s to help the Australian Federal Government resolve disputes on forests. We're still having disputes on native forest logging as you well know. He was there to help them build a protected area system that represented all habitat types, all species and therefore protected biodiversity while allowing some level of logging. Then actually expanded out to being used to do the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef. And that was finally settled on in 2004. And really the fundamentals of it, it's algorithm that solves a well-defined problem. That mathematical problem in words is, please put in your protected area system a bit of everything. And these days we would generally say at least 30 per cent of every habitat type, 30 per cent of every species distribution in a way that minimises the impact on the economy in a well-connected, resilient system. And that can be written in mathematics because mathematics is a language. And then you can use computer code to find good answers to that problem. If you have enough data on where species are and what impacts what species and what kind of developments are possible. Since then, 2000s, it's been used by most countries in the world to build many of their protected area systems. It's heavily used in China to help them decide where they’re going and what they're going to protect and what they're not going to be protecting.

So from an engineering perspective, more and more people use the tool now to say, where should we do restoration? What kind of restoration? What's the most cost-effective way of doing it? Let's say we're interested in mangrove protection. Mangrove, it's an amazing ecosystem, provides heaps of ecosystem services, fisheries, coastal protection from flooding, water quality improvement and a whole heap of bird diversity and invertebrate diversity in mangroves. Where should we optimally restore mangroves? Where should we optimally protect them? Where can we just allow them to passively regrow? We just did an analysis around Sao Paulo, saying which of the bits of the Sao Paulo coast, place again, with huge numbers of people, many of them quite poor, who are defended by mangroves, where can we optimally locate our conservation efforts to deliver outcomes? So it actually, although in theory I look like an ecologist, I was trained as a mathematician, but my whole family were engineers and unavoidably genetics controlled my life. And I think like an engineer, all I think of, where's the problem? What's the problem? How do we actually deliver an outcome? So like engineers, they could build bridges, they could build the most expensive, beautiful bridge in the world and it'll be too expensive. They could build a crappy bridge and will fall over. So that's always a compromise, isn't it, in everything we do. And not a lot of ecologists think like that.

Practical ecologists do, because, you know, I'm sure Paul would love to have ten times more money and he could put up a nest box for every single bird and he could micromanage every single square metre. But he's got a budget. So you're actually continually optimising to continually try and deliver the biggest outcome for the species of most concern, what water level, what salinity level, under what circumstances? Lots of compromises because every species needs different things. And so effectively, that's why mathematics and economics actually have become the powerful tools of conservation.

Jessica Holz: So speaking generally now, we are seeing some increasing market and community interest. I've certainly seen it through work and maybe a little bit more concerned about degradation of nature and extinction. Paul, is this the decade of nature or is this the decade of deliberation before action?

Paul Leader: Good question. This comes from the UN initiative, when 2020 to 2030 was the decade that we were going to save the world. Basically, nature positive solutions to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. Now, obviously, we're almost halfway through that. It's difficult to imagine that we are halfway towards that goal globally. And the ultimate aim is creating a world where nature is restored and thriving by 2050. And that's a global aim. There are huge gains to be had. Nature, on the whole is very resilient. Living in Hong Kong for 30 odd years, I've been going to China regularly. I was in Sichuan and on the Tibetan Plateau earlier this year. And in some of the best managed nature reserves I've ever been to in my life.

And 30 odd years ago, those nature reserves would have been poorly managed, the habitat would have been overgrazed, there would have been massive, massive poaching. But now that's been reversed by government-led initiatives. And I'm pretty sure I saw more wild animals on that trip than I had done in my previous 30 odd years of visits in China. And that was just incredible. I was there looking for giant panda. I didn't see giant panda, unfortunately. So I'll have to go back. But I did see for the first time, red panda and the deer and the wild sheep and stuff I'd never seen before. So that was really, really encouraging and shows what can be done. So I think there's enormous hope. But I think we’ve got to be realistic. We've messed up this planet to such an extent that a lot of that damage is irreversible. And there's absolutely no way it's going to be reversed in the next 25 years. We can fix some of it. And we should do the very best we can to fix what we can. And we should be looking at this differently and we should be optimising biodiversity gains in every single thing we do, every green open space that we manage. And that should become the norm, and we will improve and the situation will get better.

Jessica Holz: And Hugh did you have any thoughts on that? And could you make the connection between natural assets and human benefits to see if we can drive transformative change this decade, preferably?

Hugh Possingham: I used to think that governments would lead the extinctions and they would save us. I don't see that happening in Australia. I think in some countries it is to a certain extent, I suppose like the United Kingdom, certainly China, even the US has a very powerful endangered species law that is enabling them to recover a number of species. In Australia, investment in nature is 0.1 per cent of our budget. That's how much you spend. So if you give the Government $100 then $0.10 is going to nature. Imagine if that's how we looked after all of our natural infrastructure. The tourism industry in Australia is worth billions, $50 hundred billion dollars a year. Most of that is nature tourism, the Great Barrier Reef is one exception where people who go to the reef pay a small amount to the Reef fund. But most of what people are enjoying in Australia as tourists, they're not paying for. It's just natural infrastructure that we're allowing to erode and disappear. So I think industry, if they can get the maths right and of course they understand the idea of, here's the problem, solve the problem. I think they're going to be the people who are going to have to lead the way. They do need to have some legislation often that sits over the top of them.

And one of those pieces of legislation that's common in many countries, it's called ‘biodiversity offsetting’, where in theory, people who do some damage then have to restore that. Mostly biodiversity offsetting in Australia has failed. We led the world in it and we've led the world in failing it. So I chaired one Biodiversity Offset committee; I sit on another one at the moment from another state. I've seen it all happen. I've seen the reviews, I've written the reviews. A lot of those things can be tightened up. And in fact the industry doesn't mind that. This is just a small, very small cost on their bottom line, that they just want clarity of rules and laws and they want to make sure that they're delivering outcomes. And then given the problem and making sure the enforcement is there, they will deliver these outcomes and amazing things can happen. And I really am convinced that given direction, with stronger laws and given markets and the use of biodiversity markets, we can, not solve all of our biodiversity problems, but we can make things a lot better. We have to. And of course there are some major national and international companies that are starting to lead the way and show by example and wanting to be completely nature positive. And let's hope that they will get more and more investment and more and more market share. And those companies that are doing the wrong thing will disappear.

Jessica Holz: Thank you both so much. That was fascinating chat. Thank you.

Hugh Possingham: A pleasure.

Paul Leader: A very enjoyable chat. Thank you.

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Maria Rampa: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Engineering Reimagined.

We’re so lucky to have sustainability professionals and ecologists like Jess, Hugh and Paul working tirelessly to future proof our world for the next generation.

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Until next time, thanks for listening.