Unlocking Innovation Potential at the Centre of Science Ethics & Politics Fern Wickson

Show video

...is it really a human invention when  you've made some kind of little modification?  so assessing it as if it exists in isolation or in a vacuum is really misleading  that's the mistake that innovation has done in the past and just how spectacular this planet is Hi Fern it's really great to have you here  Thank you it's wonderful to be invited and to be having this opportunity to chat with you You are originally from Australia and now you are in the beautiful country of Norway how did you get from here to there? People say you move to Norway for either love or money and in my case i took a job and it was a postdoc position at a university in Norway my PhD was across the natural and the  social sciences i chose to do an interdisciplinary PhD across those two different faculties and  people said you're not a specialist in anything   what are you it doesn't make sense and you'll  never get a job so when i saw this advertisement   while my PhD was being examined for a postdoc in  Norway that was looking for someone with exactly   my interdisciplinary skills i thought oh i have  to apply because i'm never got to get a job   which has turned out to be not true at all  interdisciplinary skills are in high demand   and but i was looking and open for opportunities  to work abroad and Norway came across the table   and i jumped at it and i haven't left i plan to  be here a couple of years and move on but i've   been here now about 15 years not in the same place  i've moved from the south of Norway to the north   and i just love the arctic part of Norway it's absolutely beautiful it's extremely different to Australia obviously very exotic and the Norwegian culture has a lot going for it so i've been unable to leave You've worked on lots of really interesting projects some of the technologies included biotech  GM maize so maybe we can start with that   what was that project and what did you learn from it? Sure so i've had a number of projects   on biotechnology and biotechnology governance and  regulation and socioeconomic impacts and ethical issues  one of the projects i had was focused on  genetically modified maize and potential impacts   in Mexico but i've also looked at GM maize in  Spain in South Africa and Uruguay and i think that   looking at the same kind of innovation or  technology in different social contexts has   actually been really really important and really informative it's important actually to see how things operate  in different social and economic contexts and   political context because we often talk about the  impacts of innovation and they're really different   depending on where you are and what that context  is and that was one of my learnings by looking at   genetically modified maize in different places  around the world the impacts are not the same   And that's an interesting question because i think when we talk about when we think about emerging technologies most people who don't specialize  in say responsible innovation or policy   they think about the technology itself so you just  mentioned about the ethical socio-political   issues around technologies could you go into  that a little bit more? It's actually one of the things that really attracted me to Norway my PhD was focused on the regulation and governance of GMOs of biotechand in Australia looking at how do we regulate them how do we make decisions   are they safe for the environment or not what's the  quality of the science we make our decisions on   and when i was doing that work i was seeing that   not only were there problems and uncertainties in  the science regarding environmental impacts but   when there were public hearings a lot of the  comments that were coming from society from   the public about what they were worried about what with this technology and why they were against it  or protesting or concerned all of those kind of   things that were coming up in public hearings were  being deemed outside the scope of the assessment   because the assessment focused on potential risks  to human health and the environmental safety and   all of these other things was outside the scope  of the assessment and my PhD was saying well   there's a problem here you know you've got social  disagreement and rejection of this technology or   concern and you're... it's outside of what you're  considering in your regulation but in Norway they   have an assessment of risk to health and safety in  the environment but their legislation on biotech   regulation also requires an assessment of social  utility what's the value to society what's the   contribution to sustainable development and  is it ethically justifiable as a technology   and back in the early 2000s this was really unique  in terms of regulation and legislation around   innovation governance to have this kind of broader  set of criteria so that was one of the things that   made me think Norway is an interesting place to do  work on innovation governance because it already   is accepting this around biotech and of course if you're going to regulate something and have  those considerations even if you've got those great criteria in the legislation you need research to inform it so i started looking into   okay what are some of these impacts what are some  of the concerns why would we have questions around   ethical justifiability one of the interesting  ones on a biotech example is something like   intellectual property regimes and ownership  so in the case of genetically modified crops   which is different to crops bred in other ways  using other forms of techniques and technologies   you can have a patent on that product and patent  means you've got monopoly ownership rights for a   defined period of years whereas other types of  plants you can have plant breeders rights but   they're a bit restricted you have to have openness  to research and so on and so forth   and people said the patent on a living organism was unethical because once you call it a patent it's deemed an invention so is it really a human invention when  you've made some kind of little modification   and there are big ethical concerns around that there were also ethical concerns around crossing species boundaries so in the early days of biotech there was a big focus on crossing   not only species but kingdom boundaries so taking DNA  from a bacterium and putting it into a plant   you could cross animals and plants and so on and  people were saying that's unethical it's not right we've got concerns because it's not the way  we understand how the world is put together and   the way we see the world nature doesn't operate  like that and we have ethical concerns   but there are also ethical concerns about what are the  products being developed for  what's the reason behind it is it for more company profits or is it to feed the starving millions for example   so these were the kinds of ethical issues and the social impacts were what happens when some farmers choose to grow these crops and others don't how do the relationships change and shift who has more agency more options available to them who becomes more dependent on different organizations and so on so   something like Mexico was an interesting case  because they don't permit GMOs to be grown   they don't permit GM maize to be grown that's because maize is really important to their culture   the indigenous communities there have been  growing maize for thousands of years  and their creation stories actually say that they were  born from maize they weren't made from Adam and Eve they were born from maize so it has this deep cultural significance and there was documentation that genetically modified DNA was getting into their traditional and native maize varieties   and of course they didn't have the kind of  scientific laboratory equipment in these small   rural indigenous communities to check if GMOs were  there they didn't have a worldview or a language   that talked in terms of genes to be able to think about do we care if our crops of these ancient varieties are contaminated so there were kind of interesting social and cultural impacts in Mexico that we didn't see other places because it didn't have that deep significance whereas when we looked in Spain the impacts were social and economic   the challenges for organic farmers to continue  to survive when GMOs came into the scene and they   were basically pushed out of certain areas it became impossible to do organic farming  because of the requirements to keep contamination out which those kind of economic impacts weren't... that's not what we were seeing in  Mexico where it was a more cultural impact and   impact around agency and knowledge and dependence  and that kind of thing  The thing that you mentioned  before was quite interesting  in terms of Norway way early on already started to consider the socio-political ethical aspects of innovation   what do you think made a country like Norway to be to  have started looking at those things much earlier? Yes it's a really good question and i... i don't know i don't know is the answer 

one of its previous prime ministers Gro Harlem Brundtland  was very much involved in the development of   the concept of sustainable development and Norway  has a kind of pride in that and has therefore kind   of adopted sustainability and sustainable  development as an important part of its   social and political discourse whether they're  always great in practice is another question but   so i think it was quite natural for them  to say okay a potentially contested or a   socially controversial new technology let's  include this idea of sustainable development   and of course it's also a very egalitarian  society they really truly value this idea   of trying to lift the bottom up and keep the top  from getting too high and making sure everyone   has a kind of more we have a more even society  where there's free access to education and   medicine i mean that is a genuine value that kind  of surprised me when i moved from Australia i thought uh egalitarian societies it's something we say but we don't really try and implement in practice but i learned that Scandinavia  is culturally different like that and   i think that that can also make you sensitive  to social impacts we're not okay with things   creating big divides between sectors of society  and therefore we want to take into account   how this might play out in society how it  might redistribute power or money or control   or whatever we want to try and make sure that we're not giving certain groups a huge amount of advantage we want to try and make sure we're  in a society where there is a baseline in which   we want to maintain so i think that they have the  sensibility to social utility and social impacts   potentially because of that of that kind  of egalitarian society value that they have   It sounds like a more culturally embedded outlook isn't it do you find that therefore it is in every single aspect of society not just the way that the look at say innovation but also   education workforce It's taught me a lot about what culture is and what culture means just   moving internationally i think anyone who's  done that or exposed you know you really   there are these different these subtle differences   that you don't recognize that have been part of your own culture until you're exposed to another which is again just really emphasizes  if you're interested in social environmental or   economic ethical aspects of innovation context  really matters you can't say okay i'm an innovator   i'm going to make a product and i'm going to  consider its ethics and then release it globally   because people in Malaysia are not going to feel  the same way as people in the south of Spain or wherever  the context really matters when you think about social ethical   and environmental kind of dimensions of innovation And the other project that i found to be   super interesting is your beekeeping project would you go through   go into a little bit more about that project as well was it quite similar findings to the GM maize project The work we did with beekeepers was really interesting and it was sparked   by a legal case that was brought in Europe so  there was a beekeeper an amateur beekeeper in   Germany who brought a case to the court in Bavaria  because his honey had been contaminated with GMOs   with genetically modified DNA that was through  the pollen and the interesting thing was these   GMOs were not approved in Germany so it was just  a trial field site actually that had contaminated   his honey hives and he thought that this was  you know unacceptable so he took it to court   and then it went all the way to the European  Court of Justice who ultimately said well   if you've got GMOs in your honey it should  be labeled as a genetically modified food   which then had these huge ramifications for the  whole beekeeping industry in Europe which now   had to test put money into testing is honey now  containing GM pollen what level do i need to label it  so there was massive economic demand suddenly  placed on beekeepers and interestingly beekeepers   are really dependent on farmers decision  makings very often they don't own their own land   they kind of move their hives around and  to different kind of areas that are near   farms and they're dependent on what the farmers  decide and if farmers were choosing to plant GMOs   then they would suddenly have to think about  it and they had to do all this testing so we   started thinking okay let's look into what are the  impacts on beekeepers from GMOs and so on   and the legal case got very interesting and it got  redefined it depends if pollen is a constituent or   an ingredient of honey so there was a big legal  debate about that and this went on for years we   were documenting that and looking into that but  we were sort of really interested in the   social and economic impacts now on beekeepers and  ultimately in Europe there it turned out that they   redefined pollen as constituent of honey rather  than ingredients so you didn't have to label it   in the same way there wasn't the same requirement  because it would rarely pass the threshold for   labeling of GMOs in honey but we were also then  looking at both beekeepers in Spain and beekeepers   in Uruguay just to see different markets  their different contexts what are the impacts   and what was interesting there is that in Uruguay  there was primarily what they call roundup ready soy so soy beans designed to tolerate glyphosate  and so you could spray them with this herbicide   and they just keep growing while all the other  plants die and this had led to a real change in   agricultural systems in Uruguay they were growing  they were no longer small family medium mixed   farms they were becoming these really large farms  often owned by foreign interests the chemical   rates were going up and the beekeepers were really  suffering so their bees were dying they were being   pushed out to marginal areas because they were  trying to avoid GM contamination in their honey   but what was really interesting was that the bees  they were dying but they weren't dying because   of the GMO directly or necessarily because of  the glyphosate directly or the roundup directly   they were dying because they were starving there was literally no flowers left for the bees to eat   so all the flowers that would normally grow  around the edges or in between the rows were   disappearing because you now have this technology  or an innovation that looked great to a farmer   because you could just spray over everything but  it was terrible for the beekeepers they were losing their bees they were losing  their markets because they couldn't export   because they had high levels of glyphosate  in their honey as well and because there   was this risk of GMO contamination so when people think of impacts on agricultural actors from innovation in  technologies they think of farmers primarily   and so we were saying well you've got this  other group that's really vulnerable because   they depend on farmer decisions and they can't  often decide what gets done but they're impacted   and you've got these unexpected impacts when you  look at regulation it's often asking does the   technology kill a bee for example just to simplify  and the regulation does some testing and says no   the technology's safe for bees but then when you  look in the field and the context of the practice   that's required for that technology to work it's the context the system of practice that has the impact and that's not considered in the regulation very often and it's hard to do of course it's hard   to consider that system of practice but in reality  a GM crop or any other innovation doesn't exist   outside of that relational network that makes it  function in practice in reality  so assessing it as if it exists in isolation or in a vacuum is really misleading it doesn't work like that in practice   so the beekeepers really taught us about the  importance of looking at the whole system   and considering unexpected impacts  considering vulnerable groups   we really learned a lot from working with those actors actually Could you explain a little bit about   the methods that you use to look at these kind  of projects because it sounds quite complex   right you got so many different stakeholders so  many different things and of course technologies   being disruptive or new it's very difficult to even start mapping out different issues could you work through...how do you start a project? I mean it's different in the different projects right and i'm quite eclectic and my team has been eclectic so the methods we use depend a lot on  who's in the team who's doing the research what   are our questions and what are your specialties  what do you know what are we trying to access do   we have the language do we have the skills do we  have the time do we have the money so there are a   lot of factors that feed into what methods you use often we're using a combination of social science and natural science methods but in these socio-economic impacts of a whole system they're often more social science that's things like interviews and ethnographic work and   talking to people participating in their collectives and their group discussions and so on   you might be monitoring literature in terms of  their newsletters their conversations on blogs   all of these kinds of things but it's engaging  with the actors but we had a really interesting   method that we used in a project called the agricultures project so we said we want to understand the difference   between organic agricultural systems  genetically modified agricultural systems   conventional chemical systems and small scale  agroecological that's a huge question okay let's   start by mapping and we did what we called multi-sited ethnographic work and cartographies   we went and we did a method that you can call "follow the thing"   which means okay let's start with a maize seed  and follow it where does it go how does it go   from being how did it get to be a seed where  did that come from who was involved and then   you follow it through the whole farming system  or the agricultural system and you think that's   a farm and a supermarket but when you follow  the maize seed there's so many places in between   there's research and development sites there's  the seed growing sites there are processing   facilities drying facilities and all of these  spaces in between so we were following it   where does it go who do you meet there let's talk  to the people that you meet there and we did that   for all the four different systems so  maize seed in these different systems   and then we literally drew maps and we collected  information at each of the what we were calling   nodes so the farm was a node a drying facility was  a node and we interviewed people we took pictures   we took videos we made notes of what goes on  there what were the issues we have a website   called seed-links.com where we put all those maps up and you can go into the nodes and find the information that we uncovered  so just collecting whatever you can along the way   but for social impacts you have to talk to people  you have to talk to them and you have to find ways   to follow their conversations in various spaces  not only the conversations they have with you   directly in an interview where they might tell  you things that they think you want to hear but   follow their conversations through other means  and methods and ways  but of course the economic impacts that's a whole different set of methods and they're not ones i'm particularly familiar with but i've worked with colleagues who do more  kind of economic analyses and looking at markets   and market shifts and imports export changes and so on So you're currently working at the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) could you tell us a little bit about your work what does it involve maybe share some of the  interesting projects that you are working on  So i moved from being a leader of a research team  with lots of projects to an intergovernmental organization which is this North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) so what the commission does is it provides advice to the governments   of our member countries which is Norway  Iceland Greenland and the Faroe Islands   on the conservation and management of  marine mammals which is seals and whales   and in the provision of that advice we have to  take the best available science into account   but we also have to take user knowledge and  hunters' knowledge into account  my job is the Scientific Secretary so i have to receive from those member countries what their desires   for advice are so they might have a species or an  area or a request where they say please give us   advice on minke whales in Norway we want to know  how they're going how many could we potentially hunt  because all of these countries hunt these  animals as a local and sustainable food resource   and often the advice begins around catch and  harvest levels that are sustainable but of course   these days there are so many issues that are  affecting marine mammals in terms of climate   change pollution noise disturbance from shipping  and so on and we have to take all of these issues   into account when we're giving management advice  and my job is collate that advice to bring the   scientists who are experts in that field together  and have them meet and discuss the requests   that we've had and deliver their advice and i  have to write it up so they might meet for four or   five days to discuss it and that could also be meetings over several years and the scientific secretary's job is to be the bridge between the science and the policy worlds and try and find ways to communicate and collate information across those two different communities i've never worked with marine mammals before if you look at my body of work around research and innovation governance and  biotech and nanotech and sustainable food systems   and responsible innovation you don't see anything  on marine mammals but the skills of working across   science and policy environments that i have and i  also had experience trying to bring together the   knowledge of local communities with scientific  knowledge and trying to deliver that into a policy context and of course these issues of environmental management and environmental decision making there is a lot common there there are a lot of challenges in environmental decision making generally around   how science ethics and politics interact and communicate that have proved to be transferable skills that i have   You could see there were lots of similarities could you give some examples?   Yes so absolutely i mean i think one of the  things i've always been interested in is   how environmental decision making is an really  interesting blend and mix of science ethics and politics scientists often think it should be purely science politicians will often pretend it's purely politics and publics often hope that it's purely valued you know it's it's based on our ethics and our values and in practice it's this really interesting blend of all three of those and i was always interested in how that worked how we understood it how we got the best blend and communication  and how we respected the fact that all of those   three things are in play actually understanding  that has been really valuable because i can see   in my current position and in previous positions  and all work with environmental decision making   when you see those different communities vying  for power you have that ability to say   yes, we need a little bit of what you're doing we need  science but we also need values and we also have to accept the realities of politics we have to make compromises we have to negotiate interests in decision making and so being able to not sit in one of those camps or not prioritize one of those camps and say let's find ways in which we bring  this together and create space in which all of   those voices can influence environmental decision making if you are a pure scientist i think you   would struggle with understanding and including and making space for some of the more political or ethical aspects of decision making in policy you know with something like responsible innovation step number one recognize and understand diverse values  and interests because i think that's the mistake that innovation has done in the past  when i think about something like biotechnology   where there was no recognition before releasing  these things onto the market that there might   be a different set of values or positions or  interest around that innovation there was this   is going to be great we're going to make money i'm going to release it and everything's going to be wonderful and then the pushback was surprising for many people in that industry   just to say why are people so upset about this and that's not understanding that there can be diverse values and interests you can have conversations across value differences where you seeking to   influence the other or change the other's  mind or see if there's any scope for   illuminating a path that might be different to  what people are in but it's pretty rare that   people change what they care about it really is that's the politics that's the compromise   the negotiation the trade-off the challenges  but i often prefer to see it as not the difficulty and not the challenge it's the  creative opportunity because actually i can imagine and come up with things that are really novel and new that i would have never come up with on my own if i hadn't been confronted with  different values and asked to amend what i'm doing   to please a group who thinks really different to  me so i can see that as that's a blockage   it's stopping me i have to change their mind or oh wow  i have to find a creative new space   and i have to take a different path and i'm grateful for that i'm grateful for the opportunity to be creative   to be novel to go in a new direction as long as you have a flexibility in your own way   of thinking as an innovator i think you can really  see it as a gift as a value you know but   it's not easy you also have to potentially come  to a point that you may not be able to satisfy a   hundred percent of the people 100 percent of the time concrete example of something like that might be something with biotech where we say  we're against biotechnology and people say well   why what is it about it that's upsetting  to you or why do you think it's unethical   and then they say it's this crossing of boundaries  between different kingdoms animal kingdoms plant   kingdoms bacterial and so on okay so maybe we  can do what we want to do without the crossing   of kingdom is still biotech but does it  make a difference if i do what's called   cisgenics rather than transgenic so instead  of inserting a bacterial gene into a potato   maybe i just change something within the potato  and i do it with high level biotech techniques   but i do it in a slightly different  way and you might find people say oh   yes actually i'm a little bit more okay with  that or people might say no i'm still not   okay with that i want you to spend the next 20  years doing it kind of the old-fashioned way   for the innovators it looks painful probably but if   you step back and look at the trajectory of how  biotechnology has developed as a field as a whole   the techniques that are now being   developed and now being used are in some ways a  result of that public outcry and pushback so you   might not have come up with something like genome  editing if you hadn't had that pushback there's still pressure and attempts  to change genome editing as well it's not   like okay that's a perfect point no now  let's think about how we shape that and   that's what public protest does that's what  regulation does and that's what all these   soft types of governance do things like RRI where  it's not regulation but it's still trying to shape   and mold where we're going not because we're  ever going to get to the perfect place where   we've got perfect social and ethical harmony in  our innovation systems but the pushback the   navigation the kind of attempt to find common  ground in solutions that's what's important   Let's do an exercise let's say let me step  into your shoes which means i can now look at   emerging technologies with the critical eye right and let's just say  it's Sunday   i'm having my breakfast and i'm watching the news and i see that a commercial space company has landed   on a planet somewhere apart from the technical achievement of being able to get there   what else should i be looking at what else should i be thinking? One of the things that people  working in RRI often talk about is anticipation   anticipation horizon scanning future scenarios  so one of the things you would want to do is   okay what could this mean for a society as a whole  or for life on earth what does it mean let's scan and imagine different kinds of futures and that could be well then we think we can just   destroy planet earth because we've got now  the possibility to expand into all these other planets or it might be that humanity splits and we suddenly "specie-fy" because some move and some stay and maybe then we have wars because some go  and some stay or who gets to go how much money   does it cost to go can everyone go is it only the  rich who can go and that's playful you know that   doesn't have to be real scenarios but you're  projecting out into the future to anticipate   where could this lead what could arise what could  happen and i would say you would want to think   about some of these classic things like power how does power get distributed who's going who gets to control this new innovation and populate that planet or decide what gets done there who gets to do that and is there a democratic process  around who's involved or so on and so forth   this kind of distribution of power and control  and these are classic themes when you're looking   at sort of social and ethical impacts i would say but also the the kind of narratives what stories are being told now that we've landed there  what does it mean for humanity on earth that we   now have this new capacity and we have this new  technology and technique how does it change our   understanding of who we are what's important what  our future should look like the narratives of who we are and our place in the world and how the world works does any of that shift or change  is anything illuminated there and maybe the shifted  change is good it's not a good or bad but   there are classic themes i would do If we have a look at all the emerging technologies that's coming out   are there any particular ones that you are worried about? I mean it's funny my initial reaction  is to say that i'm worried about all the   emerging technologies coming out but that's  because of the kind of person i am and i'm   and i know many of them will bring wonderful  changes in my life i mean i use a mobile phone   i drive a car i mean i'm not you know i do use  new technologies but there is a part of me that is   always hesitant and that's just naturally who i am  i think i feel i'm passionate about life on this planet i'm passionate about the diversity of life we have and planet earth and the future of life on earth and there is a hesitancy in me around  emerging technologies which i... but i recognize   that is also problematic you know it's something  that i do reflect on because i think if we want to   actually make a difference in terms of the  future of life on earth we need innovation   we desperately need it if we're going to move  into a more sustainable and resilient future   we have to find new ways of living the lives that  we're currently used to so we do need innovation   so i am trying to open up my mind and say if we  hope for a better future for life on earth we're   going to need all our creative capacities and  all our innovative capacities and there will be   emerging technologies that are useful there but  things like the role of artificial intelligence   and algorithms and the mapping and the kind  of ability to monitor our societies and monitor our movements and our interactions and target things more specifically to who we are and what we might want and what we might want to purchase and buy and that makes me deeply uncomfortable   but i'm sure there's potential in there as well  and this is why i need to be exposed to people   with different values to mine to highlight to me  the values of some of these technologies   i've also been very skeptical to biotechnology in  the past when i've done all my research i've been   thinking this is not taking us in a direction  that is valuable for the future of life on earth because the agricultural systems  that they've helped perpetuate have been   so monocultural and so destructive that  i've been very skeptical on that but i am   i'm excited to see what possibilities there are  with genome editing but i'm yet to be convinced   that it's going to help us shift our systems of agriculture  we need systems that are diverse and supporting diverse  life but it's interesting i am just generally   internally skeptical towards emerging technologies  but that's why i love studying them and   working with people and innovators who are  genuinely excited by them it's valuable to me   to see to hear their perspectives and see their side Even though you had a variety of   different roles over the last 15 years plus  there's clearly a consistency in terms of   all these roles are focused on environmental  sustainability why this area in particular?   Yes it's a good question um i have said in the past  that i think it's because i was given the name Fern and because i was always asked as a child  oh does that mean your parents are hippies and   i always thought what is a hippie they  care about nature and the environment   so it's kind of a nominal determinism my parents  called me fern and that turned me into someone   who became a kind of environmentalist in a way i  mean i grew up on a research station and a farm   and i was surrounded more by plants and animals  than i was by other people and so i just had   this deep love of nature and had it always and  then studied kind of ecology and political science   and ecology just taught me where we're all  interconnected it's one little blue marble   in the vast expanses of space and we all share it  we have this one home and in it when you look from   space down at this little blue bubble that some  is how is floating there full of all our life   we're not we're not separate we're not somehow superior or... we're all entangled and our fate is entangled and just how spectacular this planet is i'm fascinated by all the diverse forms of life that have arisen on this little blue bubble you look around   a praying mantis is a fascinating thing a penguin is a fascinating thing a maize plant is an incredible thing   and that we're all here it seems so precious  and we're losing we're losing biodiversity every single day   people are very concerned about  climate change right now but i wish people   were even more concerned about biodiversity loss  we are losing forms of life on this planet   every single day and that's happening right now  that's not a future impact that's present right now and we're all interdependent we're losing that magic we're in the sixth mass extinction   that humanity is kind of perpetuating and that just seems seems criminal you know   that we're letting these forms of life not just letting them  but facilitating their loss from this planet and that just seems a loss from our ourselves our broader identity you know   our identity as as a planet we're becoming less rich, less beautiful, less magical    i want to fight for it so i think it's my name it's my studies in ecology it's my growing up on a farm and it's just the gift and the privilege i've had to travel the world and see so   much biological and cultural diversity that i've realized how precious that is too and how magical that is and so i wanted to work with that in the work that i do i wanted to try and advance   sustainability on this planet and resilience for sure Then what is the one thing that you think could help do that  if you had one message for people or would that be? One message? hmm...

that's so difficult it's a good question but it's difficult what would make a real difference i mean the thing that i've in my research the thing that i've consistently been passionate about is how we feed ourselves the impact of our food production systems on our planet is enormous it has an impact on biodiversity on water on pollution chemical pollution and other forms of pollution on habitat destruction what we eat and how we feed ourselves is crucial and i think if people really took the  time to reflect over what they put in their mouth   and it's interesting because it's your basic  relationship with nature how you feed yourself   is that it's the foundation how you relate to  nature and people we do it if you're lucky in an   industrialized society you'll feed yourself at  least three times a day probably more   and yet we don't often think about where does it come from who developed it how is it impacting the planet   how is it impacting me is it building the kind  of world i want when i put my money into this   food item is that building the kind of world that  i want and i think if people who are more aware   and reflective over the food that they put into  their mouth and the impact that had on the planet   it could make a huge difference because people  care and they want a planet that is sustainable   and that is treating animals with dignity  and so on and yet that often doesn't spin back into something they that everybody does  multiple times a day it's so widespread and has   such an impact so if people could think carefully  about what they put in their mouths and what they   invest their money in i think it could make a huge difference Wonderful!  Thank you so much for your time and i hope we get to speak again soon. Thank you. Yes thank you so much for the opportunity

2021-05-29

Show video