Social Anthropologists call for more complexity in biodiversity debate
Increasingly, animal and plant species are being moved, or migrating to new places as a result of climate change, trade and new infrastructure. While often referred to as ‘invasive’, the researchers behind the BIOrdinary project prefer to speak of migratory species. They want to shift the debate to focus on local contexts and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of biodiversity.
The UN biodiversity policy demands that at least 30 percent of the Earth's land, water and oceans be protected by 2030, commonly known as 30x30. In Sweden, we still have a long way to go before we reach that goal. But the researchers behind the BIOrdinary project at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, want to go further than that.
“Much of biodiversity policy and research is about places with unique natural environments rich in biodiversity. 30 percent of the planet is now designated to be preserved in a form of biodiversity conservation area. We want to flip the script and ask: what do we do with the other 70 percent?” says Bengt G. Karlsson, professor of social anthropology and one of the lead researchers behind the project.
“These are what we call ordinary places, characterised by human activity.
For example, cities, farmlands, beaches, archipelagos and, in my case, plantations. How do people think about biodiversity there? This is the starting point of the project. If you start looking at those places and the history of how species move, you can build a different biodiversity policy.
How we can protect biodiversity in everyday life
The project, which started in 2023, is funded by Formas and runs for four years. It is divided into three different stages. The first stage focuses on historical understandings of species’ origins and migration. Stage two revolves mainly around fieldwork – at this point, most of the researchers go out into the field to collect data. In the final stage the researcher will try make to a contribution to the biodiversity policy agenda.
“We want to add a kind of complexity to it. We want biodiversity to be considered in a more relational way, with an understanding of how species move and how they arrive in their new habitats. There are rarely simple solutions. We want to bring the discussion into concrete cases.”
Bengt G. Karlsson emphasises that they are not against protecting 30 per cent, but that the discussion on diversity often has little to do with reality. And that there is much we can do in our everyday lives to protect biodiversity in the other 70 percent.
“Species have moved, this is our new reality. How should we deal with it? Many people think there is a simple answer to it, like the 30x30 policy. But it is important to also start thinking about the 70 per cent where we live and work, and how we can make things easier for non-human beings in our vicinity. It can be basic things like letting plants bloom before we mow the lawn or the grass in parks, and letting flowers bloom on the roadside.”
Who belongs to a landscape and who doesn't?
“We try to think of the landscape as an archive, in which you understand yourself as part of a relational context together with plants, animals, insects, microbes and the wider environment. If you think historically, the landscape has always changed, new species have come and gone.”
Bengt G. Karlsson refers to the vexed debate on wolves in Bergslagen as an example. After disappearing in the 1970s and 1980s, wolves have now started to come back. If a species is considered to be part of a landscape, it is considered to have a greater right to be there. However, when a species is considered to come from the outside, it can be treated differently, says Bengt G. Karlsson.
“Is it then ‘invasive’? How should we deal with this situation? Many people think: they don't belong here, so we have the right to kill them. But in the past, for example at the beginning of the 20th century, there were wolves there. Here we can talk about a so-called ‘shifting baseline’ – how different generations in a society have different ideas of what belongs and what doesn't, which is often based on some kind of romantic idea of what it looked like when you were a child.
However, in BIOrdinary, the researchers are not looking specifically at the wolf. Each subproject features a key animal or other organism. For example, mink in the Stockholm archipelago, Pacific oysters on the West Coast, tea plantations in northern India and East Africa, fish migration as a consequence of the construction of the Suez Canal, control of disease-bearing mosquitoes in Singapore, and the perception of feral goats in New Zealand. More specifically, the researchers are trying to understand how people who are living in these different ordinary places deal with and view migratory species, and how they affect and in turn are affected by other animal and plant species in the surrounding environment. The researchers work ethnographically, out in the field.
Migratory species instead of ‘invasive’ species
Much of the migration of species has occurred through people bringing species with them, such as the mink, or when building infrastructure projects, such as the Suez Canal. In the Suez Canal, the merging of two water systems has led to the migration of many species.
“With climate change, more and more species will migrate and end up in the ‘wrong’ places. How do we deal with this and how do we talk about them? When we say a species is ‘invasive’, we end up using a kind of genocidal language, which legitimises killing. In some cases, it may be necessary. But many times, invasive species cannot be eradicated and we have to learn to live and co-exist with them. We prefer talking about migratory species.”
So, what happens when we define species as invasive alien species? Then, certain measures have to be followed under various EU protocols and other legislations. The Pacific oyster project touches on the legislative discussions, as does the project on goats in New Zealand run by Gabriel Lennon, a PhD student in the project. Goats were brought to New Zealand during the early colonial period as livestock, but a fairly large group have gone feral and now live in areas that are nature reserves, where they have come to be seen as ‘problem animals’.
“When goats are on farmland, inside the fences, certain legislation applies. When they are outside the fences, in the national park next door, a different kind of legislation applies. Here we see that how these species are defined can have real consequences in practice.”
Learning to live with these species is also not without its complications. Some species migration to the “wrong place” resulting in enormous consequences as other plant and animal life is at risk of eradication.
“There is a tricky ethical and political discussion around the killing. If you don't kill them, they might exterminate other species. So sometimes it can be justified, but you still have to take an ethical approach.”
‘If you can't beat them – eat them’
The Pacific oyster sub-project is led by researcher Ivana Maček. Pacific oysters have migrated partly on their own accord with ocean currents. Some have come to the Swedish West Coast via France, where they are cultivated. The problem is that they are causing the local flat oysters and blue mussels to disappear. As part of the project, the researchers have organised a series of summer schools, such as last year at the Tjärnö Marine Laboratory, next to the Koster National Park on the West Coast. They invite other researchers, students, county administrative boards and other stakeholders to their summer schools with the aim to learn from each other and to bring in an interdisciplinary perspective.
“Pacific oysters are a problem. But they also have positive functions in the marine ecosystem. They act as reef builders, where other species can attach themselves – they create clusters and thus build new mini-ecosystems,” says Bengt G. Karlsson.
“Then it becomes even more problematic to eradicate them, then you are killing other organisms as well and missing the positive aspects. How should we deal with them? At the summer school we played with the phrase: ‘If you can't beat them, eat them’. Some people do harvest them, but it's currently on a far too small scale.”
The BIOrdinary project investigates so-called ‘biodiversity dilemmas’. In this sub-project, the dilemma is that Pacific oysters cannot be freely harvested, which is linked to rights to fishing waters and landowners' rights to the shoreline. However, Ivana Maček's research shows that there has been a shift in the perception of Pacific oysters – in recent years they have become more accepted by local people. The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management has also changed their definition of the species to ‘high risk of invasive’.
Dilemma between productivity and diversity
Bengt G. Karlsson studies tea plantations, and more specifically at the Assam tea plant and its migration across the Indian Ocean to East Africa and elsewhere. In his project, he follows the movement of the tea plant, from a plant grown in the forest alongside other plants to it being converted by the British into a plantation crop. In the past, bushes planted from seed were used. Today, new methods of plant breeding favour almost exclusively cuttings of particularly productive tea bushes. At the same time, various pesticides and fertilisers are used to boost the productivity of tea plantations.
“This has resulted in genetically identical crops. This has increased plantation productivity as the same bush can produce more leaves. But what happens as a result of climate change and increased temperatures, is that whole plantations can be wiped out when new diseases and pests come in. The risk is higher with cuttings. Here we have a dilemma between productivity and biodiversity.”
A tea plantation with seed-based bushes, on the other hand, will have greater biodiversity and genetic variation, and they will have deeper roots, whereas a plant that comes from a cutting will be more vulnerable. Seed-based tea bushes have also been shown to be more resilient to climate change both in terms of higher temperature and more rainfall, or erratic rainfall. The whole form of plantation is based on removing all other vegetation to create monocultures, making plantations one of the major threats to biodiversity. Bengt G. Karlsson says that tea researchers in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka have now begun to highlight the increased vulnerability of the whole plantation system.
“We need to bring more diversity into the plantations, both in terms of increased genetic variation with different varieties, including varieties that are more climate-resilient. But also, that we need to break up plantations with forest areas and other plants. We can see that the plantation form is killing itself, it does not work in a warmer world.”
But the UN biodiversity plan does not include plantations in the 30 per cent to be conserved. Instead, the plan focuses on preserving biodiversity in more pristine landscapes.
A different conversation without easy answers
The BIOrdinary researchers believe that it is important that both natural and social sciences are involved in the debate on biodiversity. Today, the natural science approach dominates, focusing on species and animals, but the social science perspective is also needed. So, what might a contribution to the biodiversity debate look like from an anthropological perspective?
“One thing is to bring local actors even more into the discussion, instead of leaving them outside of policy work.”
Bengt G. Karlsson gives a recent example from the news: fishing quotas for herring that are set at EU levels but have little or no basis in the local context.
“Fishing and fishing quotas must be discussed in relation to the seals, birds and the people who live there, who see the herring disappearing. The local community must be involved in resource management. There needs to be an integrated discussion where different aspects of the local environment and people's livelihoods are taken into account. I think that is what our policy contribution will ultimately be about.”
This brings us back to what permeates the whole BIOrdinary project: that today's environmental debate is oversimplified.
“It is not just about saying what is good or bad, but about recognising the complexity of different historical trajectories and how we relate to the environment. As anthropologists, we don't come up with simple answers or ready-made solutions like the 30x30 policy. Not that the discussion is uninteresting, but there must be other conversations too. This is a different, quieter conversation – but I think it's a conversation that will be more important in the long run,” says Bengt G. Karlsson.
Text: Elin Sahlin
Last updated: December 16, 2024
Source: Faculty of Social Sciences