Guest: Helmut Hillebrand
Are there tipping points in ecosystems — and if so, can we detect them before the system tips? In this episode of Inside Biodiversity, host Volker Hahn talks with Helmut Hillebrand, professor at the University of Oldenburg and the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, about the science and the politics behind thresholds, regime shifts, and planetary boundaries.
Hillebrand explains why predicting tipping points in ecosystems is so difficult, what his global meta-analysis revealed about abrupt versus gradual change, and why applying “safe operating spaces” to biodiversity might do more harm than good. Together, Hillebrand and Hahn explore what this means for environmental policy — and for how we think about the resilience and value of life on Earth.
“Thinking about biodiversity in binary ways—about below and above the threshold—is the wrong way of thinking about how biodiversity works and how we rely on it”, says Hillebrand.
Related links:
Helmut Hillebrand at the University of Oldenburg:
https://uol.de/en/icbm/research-groups/plankton-ecology/staff/helmut-hillebrand
Hillebrand’s meta-meta-analysis discussed in this episode: “Thresholds for ecological responses to global change do not emerge from empirical data”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1256-9
Essay paper – mentioned in this episode – which conceptualises Hillebrand’s criticism of the tipping narrative: “Thresholds and tipping points are tempting but not necessarily suitable concepts to address anthropogenic biodiversity change—an intervention”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12526-023-01342-3
Paper, which introduced Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) as the control variable for the Functional Biosphere Integrity Planetary Boundary – discussed in this episode: “Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Host: Dr. Volker Hahn, Head of Media and Communications at iDiv
Postproduction: Leven Wortmann
