In light of the upcoming Summit of Future in New York this September, an online webinar titled “Reassessing Challenges, Opportunities, and Commitments for Biodiversity Conservation” was co-organized by the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability, the Ateneo Biodiversity Research Laboratory, SDSN Philippines, SDSN Hong Kong, SDSN Southeast Asia, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the United in Diversity Foundation.

The goal of the webinar was to raise awareness for the current state of global and local biodiversity, explore the nature of collaborations needed to advance biodiversity conservation, and demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of biodiversity as an issue.

At the Summit of Future, it is expected that the Pact for the Future will be signed. This pact aspires to forge new international consensus and agreement on how the world can reach its Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The Pact will center around partnerships and collaborations, and, as the speakers of this webinar highlight, global climate issues require widespread cooperation across multiple stakeholders.

The first speaker, Professor Jatna Supriatna, opened the webinar with a discussion of what is required in order to preserve biodiversity, from his perspective in Indonesia. Indonesia presents an important case study of biodiversity conservation as it is a country rich in natural resources and species that also experiences a high frequency of geo-ecological disasters including volcanoes, earthquakes, sea level rise, and monsoons.

The importance of preserving biodiversity in a country such as Indonesia, and across the world, is vast. Biodiversity directly and indirectly provides a number of benefits and ecosystem services that everybody across the world utilizes everyday. These can include: provision of food, shelter, wood, fiber, raw materials, industrial chemicals, and medicines; pollination and seed dispersal; air and water purification; climate modification and balance; drought and flood control; nutrient cycling; pest control; and aesthetic beauty.

There is also a deep-rooted aspect of biodiversity related to culture, religion, and ecotourism in many places. Humans appreciate natural ecosystems, as reflected through the arts, religions, and traditions of diverse cultures across the globe. This kind of appreciation is also heavily seen in activities as common as gardening, pet keeping, nature photography, hiking, and fishing, where people have developed activities to enjoy the wonder, inspiration, peace, and beauty of natural environments.

The value of biodiversity can also be measured monetarily in terms of the market value certain services create. For example, the pharmacy sector relies on biodiversity for around $643 billion in market value. Biodiversity also provides the biotechnology sector with $70 billion in market value.

Because of these widespread benefits, phenomena that damage or degrade biodiversity, such as deforestation, are of critical importance and concern to address.

The next speaker, Ms. Karmila Parakkasi, detailed her experiences with terrestrial biodiversity in the forests of Indonesia, a vast (25 million hectares) and important resource for the country. Forest loss is happening at critical rates, in turn, leading to habitat and biodiversity loss. This biodiversity is crucial for the over 25% of Indonesians who directly depend on forests for their livelihoods and survival. When forests are degraded, their goods and services become increasingly scarce for this large part of the population.

According to Parakkasi, initiatives to address this urgent issue are a shared responsibility between the private sector and the public/citizens. Currently within Indonesia’s private sector, 56% of state forests are allocated for forestry production concessions. There needs to be a balance between this commodity production and the preservation and restoration of biodiversity for future generations to come.

Indonesia has also seen citizen-led initiatives to achieve the same goals of sustainability for generations. One example is Birdpacker Indonesia, started by a small group of bird enthusiasts and bird scientists who put their concern for birds into tangible action. This group initiated Burungnesia, the largest citizen science project currently in Indonesia. Burungnesia allows anybody to input information they encounter about birds into their app which automatically compiles the data to show bird sightings, detection, and more information for users.

Moving forward, the public and citizens need to continue initiatives like Birdpacker and leverage social media and influencers for greater biodiversity conservation awareness. The private sector needs to establish a new normal of doing business by setting aside conservation areas for management and protection, along with restoration of already damaged areas. The government plays an important role as well, as they must stop the illegal trade of wildlife through strengthened regulations, law enforcement, and hiring of personnel with integrity.

The next panelist speaker, Professor Apple Chui, expands the topic of biodiversity conservation to her experiences working in Hong Kong. In the 1980s, Hong Kong had a very high amount of coral coverage (70-80%) in nearby bodies of water. After anthropogenic disturbances including untreated sewage and livestock and industrial waste entering the water, all of the corals were destroyed in what is now known as the first marine ecological disaster in Hong Kong.

In 1987, the government swiftly responded to this disaster with the Tolo Harbour Action Plan, which led to over a decade of cumulative efforts that worked to improve the water quality of previously affected waters. The reality was that even with the newly improved water quality, the corals never returned to these sites, even after 20 years, resulting in a devastating loss not only for the corals themselves, but also for the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity that they provided.

Because of this, a new goal emerged in the city to bring back the coral ecosystems in a way that is sustainable, scalable, and genetically diverse for future coral restoration. These efforts showed the results of high survivorship from outplanted corals, bringing back critical biodiversity like the Butterfly fish.

While this success has been measurable and significant, the next steps of efforts in Hong Kong include scaling up coral restoration and overcoming challenges associated with the slow growth of corals. Overall, active coral restoration is still needed to bring Hong Kong’s coral reefs back to what they once were, relying largely on building partnerships among scientists, stakeholders, and the public.

The final panelist, Ms. Abigail Marie T. Favis, moved the biodiversity discussion towards urban biodiversity conservation. As she says, most people tend to think of urban environments as concrete, glass, and steel making up urban infrastructure. But, it is very possible to find and implement nature and biodiversity within heavily urban areas in parks, urban forests, ponds and creeks, gardens, school campuses, and even cemeteries.

In the metro-Manila area specifically, urban spaces and biodiversity are being threatened and rapidly dwindling as urbanization increases. This is due to a range of factors including poorly planned urbanization, light and noise pollution, improper waste disposal, presence of invasive species, human-wildlife conflicts, and wildlife-infrastructure conflicts.

Ateneo de Manila University, where Ms. Abigail Marie T. Favis works, is one of the last remaining green corridors in the city and houses a large amount of unbuilt area and green space. The university has strong priorities of sharing nature experiences with others through their campus by building a campus biodiversity inventory into university policy, showing the presence and importance of urban biodiversity, and encouraging the community’s contact with nature.

The citizen science approach has also been important for the university to collect scientific data, using social media as the main communication channel. Citizen science has shown to have positive and measurable impacts on science literacy, nature education, and contact with nature.

In general, considerations for urban nature spaces are crucial for keeping cities liveable and beautiful. Everything that happens in a city is related in one way or another to the ecosystem services and green spaces that high biodiversity provides.

Wrapping up the webinar, the panelists discussed the importance of collaboration in their experiences and work in biodiversity conservation. It is strongly emphasized that collaboration can lead to much greater scaling of movements. For example, initiatives in Hong Kong, as a geographically small region, aim to collaborate with government, NGO, and education groups in order to broaden their scale and impact.

For forest conservation, there is often collaboration between forest rangers, governments, and national parks, as wildlife knows no boundaries as they move. Local universities also play a major role in collaboration, promoting multidisciplinary approaches for single issues.

Another key aspect of biodiversity conservation revolves around science communication. This involves not just focusing on science alone but also on storytelling in order for people to develop their own personal connections to their culture, childhood, or other experiences to inspire action.

Conservation initiatives often do include many competing interests and trade offs to maneuver, along with an understanding of what is feasible and doable within one’s own sphere of influence. But, the goal and hope of individual initiatives like the speakers have discussed is to find common goals that have a trickle down effect on other spheres.

This conversation between experts in the biodiversity conservation field is a positive example of collaborative work towards building the future that the world wants to see for all people living in it.