Biodiversity as a Neutral Metric, Not Inherent Good

Is biodiversity loss always bad? What if cutting down an old-growth forest actually increases the number of species? According to biodiversity researcher Jonathan Chase, “You can have huge levels of biodiversity in habitats that are strongly degraded by people.”

In this episode, we explore how biodiversity changes can be counterintuitive, and why measuring it is more complicated than just counting species. If biodiversity isn't inherently good or bad, then what do we—as individuals and as a society—value about nature? We discuss these questions in this episode of Inside Biodiversity with Jonathan Chase, professor at iDiv and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

Other topics discussed include:

• The extent of human-driven changes on the planet and how they are reflected in biodiversity metrics like species richness
• The language we use when talking about biodiversity shifts
• Global biodiversity loss, island extinctions, detection and attribution, and more

Links:

Professor Jonathan Chase at iDiv: https://www.idiv.de/staff/jonathan-chase/

Paper on “detection and attribution” in biodiversity research, discussed in this episode: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0182

TEDx talk by Jonathan Chase, “Biodiversity scientists as honest brokers or advocates?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXgd8d5cCuY&list=PLJFvA_Py3UkyQCmYVpSOUtT38YdNyyr5x&index=4

Host: Dr. Volker Hahn, Head of Media and Communications at iDiv Postproduction: Leven Wortmann