Why we depend on healthy ecosystems - Interview of Thierry Lucas from UNEP ahead of COP21

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Thierry Lucas is currently leading the coordination of biodiversity and the ecosystems management subprogramme at UNEP’s regional office for Europe. He also provides the Secretariat of the Pan-European Biodiversity Strategy supporting its member states in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Mr Lucas has over 19 years of technical and management experience with the UN, including expertise in Africa and Asia. Before working for UNEP Mr. Lucas was the project manager of an adolescent health programme in Asia from 2003 to 2007. Selene Álvarez Peñaand Theres Ackermann had an interview with him about UNEP’s current projects evolving around ecosystem-management and sustainability.

Could you please explain ecosystem-based adaption and mitigation to climate change?

I like to call this a nature-based fix. It works like this: nature has provided us with many services like clean air and water, fertile soil, pollination and a way to mitigate the climate for millennia. As you know, a lot of researchers are currently trying to trap our excess CO2 into soil. While we recognize those research could bare fruits, we are also promoting a different approach. We are promoting to seek out our environment, our forests and to safeguard the wetlands, the peatlands in the north and also more globally to look at the way we grow our food. The nature-based fix states that if you have a healthy forest, it works as a carbon sink. When the forest grows, the carbon is naturally trapped into the soil.

Look at it this way: a study in Manchester, UK found that if we were able to increase our forests or green areas by 10 % it would keep the maximum temperatures by 2080 at nearly the same level as 1961–1990 and mitigate the expected temperature rise of 4°. This is really interesting, because as human beings we have the tendency to often think about technology, but we are not using nature at its best. That is what this eco-system based adaptation and mitigation is about in short. (See: http://www.unep.org/pdf/BioseqRRA_scr.pdf )

If we were able to plant 10% more forests in the northern hemisphere, we would be able to mitigate climate change up to the year 2080!

A negative example shows what can happen if we exploit ecosystems too much: the drained peatlands in the northern part of Russia and Belarus for agriculture, peat extraction and forestry usage have lead to major forest fires. Afterwards, nature was left like that and the ecosystem was not functioning anymore. We experienced a double negative impact: depleted ecosystems and rising CO2-emissions, because the destroyed peatlands used to trap a lot of CO2.

What are the consequences for us as human beings if an ecosystem gets destroyed?

One metaphor I am always using is a knitted pullover with different stitches on it. You can see the pullover as the global ecosystem and the stitches as the different species or smaller ecosystems.  When the pullover is without any holes, it is very resistant. But if a species disappears or some ecosystems services are damaged, it is like removing one stitch. You will have a hole in the sweater. Now pressure like climate change or human impact is like putting your finger in this hole and tearing on it. You’ll see the hole will become bigger and bigger. For example: a study shows how a wolf population can have an impact on all other species and even on the rivers as conducted in Yellowstone National Park.

So killing the wolves had a snowball-effect?

Exactly. For example: wolves hunt deer and as a result deer are less numerous. So when there are fewer wolves the deer population will grow. Because of the larger deer population, more bushes and small trees will be eaten. Thus the deer will also have an impact on how the forest propagates. More deer mean less forest propagation, which in turn affects the riverbanks. Denser vegetation on riverbanks will be more constrained in a pathway. Likewise the riverbank will stabilize and there will be less erosion if forests are there. This shows that we sometimes cannot even imagine the impact of the snowball-effect.

But back to what happens if an ecosystem is destroyed. It simply cannot provide the services it used to provide anymore. Take acidic forests for instance, as we had in Germany. The service of clean air they provided is not working anymore. Or take wetlands: they are a way to get clean, filtered water. But a polluted wetland can obviously no longer provide this. The same goes for pollination. As you probably know we are losing a lot of bees in Europe. This also has economic consequences. If you lose bees, you are losing the pollination-service.

Increasing the quality of life of people all around the world by using nature’s resources in a sustainable and responsible way is one of UNEP’s main goals. How are your current projects contributing to this goal?

UNEP has a lot of initiatives for dealing with that. There is for example one of our projects together with UNDP . It is called the Poverty-Environment Initiative. Here, we work with less developed countries, tackling the environment together. We are doing this by working on different levels, such as the governmental level. For instance, we advise them on which sectors they have to focus on to fight poverty. (See: http://www.unpei.org/ )

Another example take Indonesia, and look at the share of agriculture, forests and fisheries in the global GDP. Those 3 factors only represent 11% of the Indonesian GDP. But if you take the poor population of Indonesia, which is 99 million out of 246 million, those 3 sectors represent 75% . This means that they are essential for the poor population to survive, it is called the GDP of the poor. We are providing opportunities for poor people to get a living out of their ecosystems, educating them about sustainable management of those three sectors.

Moreover we work with NGO’s and a number of civil societies. It is really important to work from the top-level and at the bottom-level at the same time. If you work with local people, you empower them. That’s why we often work with women on global level: they can be the ones to make change happen because of their special roles in families and societies, in education and in transmitting knowledge.

If you work with local people, you empower them!

What can we, as individuals, do to help protect our natural resources?

The floor is yours. Where do you think that you could have an impact?

I think I am having an impact by not using a car. I always use public transportation and also try to keep eating meat at a minimum and buy organic food.

The things you said are really important. Let us take meat consumption. If you take 1 calorie from cereals, you have 1 to 1. You will get one calorie from the cereals and when you eat it you have one calorie in your body. If you eat chicken, you need 20 calories of food to produce one calorie of chicken. And with other meat it is even worse. That is why you can have an influence on the climate. If you need to produce 20 times more calories but in the end get less, this costs more energy. Eating local food is also important. Just as the way we produce food and how we work with energy.

Renewable energy is another huge factor. If you opt for a green electricity provider, you can influence the choice of companies. If everybody asks for green electricity, all companies will start to provide it. Water also plays a major role. Do not drink water from plastic bottles but take it from the tap and use a filter. Or use glass bottles. All of this can have a global impact on the environment. Temperature likewise: if you keep the temperature in your home on a lower level, you won’t suffer but you will help the environment.

Finally you can also have a big impact by communicating. If you have something to say about natural resources, then say it!

Implementation and enforcement of biodiversity law is a big problem. Is UNEP working on a solution for this?

The first thing which is really important to me is this: what has been agreed, needs to be explained. So if you have a Conference of the Parties decision about biodiversity, then it is really important that all governments and ministries are informed. They need to be aware of the decision, the decision needs to be explained, and also the consequences of the decision need to be clarified. You cannot expect to get anything implemented if the people who have to work on the legal aspects are not aware of it. Of course my work is linked with the ministry of environment, but when you deal with biodiversity it also affects a big number of other parties and they need to be informed as well.

The second thing is capacity building. You need to increase the capacity of all the people who are going to be the “watchdogs”.  Furthermore the governments need to implement the law and to put things into practice. If you want to implement a law, you will have consequences in terms of budget. For example I am often working in Georgia. They want to do biodiversity monitoring but it is costing a lot of money and human resources if you need to count all your plants and species. Sonever forget about human and financial resources on entering and enforcing a law.

We as UNEP are working with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and we are providing environmental performance reviews. So at the request of governments we evaluate how they are doing in terms of the environment. I get input from academics, experts, NGOs and civil societies. We give evaluations and recommendations for the governments and after some years we come back and do the same evaluation again, we look at what the government has done in the meantime. These reports are open to the public and are an additional way how we reinforce the capacity of people. Aside from that you also have the court of justice on EU level and the possibility for any citizens or NGO’s to contact the court.

If you could send a message to the world regarding the importance of the Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, what would it be?

The message would be for all the negotiators to be ambitious. The current policies put in place by a number of governments are working. There is evidence that we have started to make progress and that current policies are helping to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to act now and very quickly! All individual countries came with pledges and commitments they were going to do until 2030. It is very crucial that those countries get an agreement and go along the lines of what they committed to do.

We also need to start a transformation of the society, at individual level, like I explained earlier. UNEP has just issued a report which is called “the Emissions Gap report”. In this we are looking at emissions and also state opportunities for governments. For instance we look at energy-efficiency and at what can be done to reduce CO2 emissions caused by food production. These options are transitions to a new way of living.

At the Climate Change Conference in Paris, it will also be interesting to see the positive message from some innovative private companies. In Johannesburg there has already been made a commitment by a number of those to take the lead. UNEP is working to attract investors and increase additional capital flows for low carbon projects Companies understand they have to adapt to stay competitive in the future.

Dealing with climate change has a big impact in every single decision that we take in our daily life.