Sustainability: where are we going? A botanical perspective

Overview Who are BGCI? What are botanic gardens? What are they doing for sustainability? Time for next generation sustainability messages?

Botanic Gardens Conservation International “To mobilise botanic gardens and engage partners in securing plant diversity for the well- being of people and the planet".

Defining the botanic garden “An institution holding collections of documented and living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education.”

The world’s botanic gardens contain 80, ,000 living plant species Singapore

Over 200 million visitors a year

Botanic gardens and conservation

Botanic gardens and sustainability “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” John Muir, 1911

Sustainability case studies

Education for sustainability

How to move forward? Time for some new messages? Do we need to be saying anything different? Look at conservation targets… Look at whether threats have lessened…

“To achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth” The rate of loss is continuing or increasing. 10–30% of mammal, bird, and amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction. All primates, all cetacean whales and dolphins, all big cats such as leopards and tigers, all bears, all elephants, and all rhinoceroses are at risk.

One third of all plant species are threatened with extinction

Nov, 2009 Global Carbon Project report The World is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century. CO 2 emissions have increased dramatically since 2002 and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

Current opinion polls Nov, The Times - Only 41% of British people accept as a scientific fact that the situation is largely man-made. Oct, Pew Centre - 64% of Americans don’t ‘believe’ in man made climate change.

Main drivers of biodiversity loss Habitat transformation Invasive alien species Over-exploitation of species Pollution Climate change Drivers of drivers emissions increasing deforestation increasing population increasing relative consumption increasing

Hope! “If 98 doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say ‘No, he doesn’t, he is fine,’ I will go with the 98. It’s common sense—the same with climate change. We go with the majority, the large majority....The key thing now is that since we know this industrial age has created it, let’s get our act together and do everything we can to roll it back.”

Are we at a ‘teachable moment’?

“We are handing over to young people a degraded planet and expecting them to clean it up – but what tools are we putting at their disposal? What frameworks for thinking, what key metaphors, what worldviews are they offered to make sense of the situation and discover positive ways forward? Taken-for-granted patterns of thought are passed on automatically to the next generation via the education system; only by surfacing the predominant linear, mechanistic worldview and subjecting it to critical thinking can we begin to address the challenges we face.” Webster and Johnson, Sense and Sustainability: Educating for a low carbon world (2008)

A communication problem

What 5 elements make up an effective message, American Psychology Association First, it has to have some urgency. Second, it has to have as much certainty as can be mustered with integrity. Third, there can't be just one message: there must be messages targeted to different groups. Fourth, messages should be framed in positive terms. Fifth, you have to give people the sense that their vote counts and that their effort won't be in vain.

Environment People Economy To conclude There is an increasing need for botanic gardens and arboreta to be creative and ambitious, to speak out and think big. “If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What’s required are big changes in demand and in supply.” David MacKay, Without the Hot Air, 2009

Thank you for listening!