Biodiversity Rides A Popular Wave

Job opportunities expand as scientists from many disciplines join forces to preserve a multitude of plant and animal species WASHINGTON--New programs, reports, legislation, and other activities are focusing attention on the study and preservation of the world's diverse species and habitats. "There's a rising tide," says Robert Jenkins, vice president for science at the Nature Conservancy. "Biodiversity has come to be the thing that we're all concerned with." It's hard to imagine how a piece of technology used to speed shoppers through busy checkout lines could play a role in saving endangered species. "But barcodes sell biodiversity faster than any other thing you can think of," says Dan Janzen, an ecologist whose bent to treat biodiversity as a product has helped make Costa Rica's conservation efforts an international success story. Janzen's unorthodox methods require researchers to view biodiversity not as a science but rather as a marketing and business strategy. He sees Costa Rica, which is the size of West Virginia, as a 50,000-square-kilometer corporation. Its citizens are the shareholders, he says, and biodiversity is the company's newest product line. Carrying the analogy further, he says that the firm's assembly lines are staffed by parataxonomists, people who live in the country's nature reserves and who have been trained to collect, identify, and catalog the great diversity of species in this tiny Central American nation. They assign each specimen a barcode, which is keyed into a computer. The resulting database offers a wealth of information about the specimen. This work is done under the auspices of the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica (INBio), which was started in 1989. "Our goal is no longer the production of taxonomic monographs," says Janzen, referring to the difference between his approach and the one taken by many of his colleagues. "These workers are opening up territory for phytochemical prospecting for new products useful to mankind." This inventory, the barcodes, and the term "phytochemical prospecting" are part of Janzen's plan to make politicians and business leaders see species richness the same way they see gold ore or oil reserves--as a natural resource that can bring in revenues if exploited. As a result, Costa Rica is rebuilding its economy with biodiversity as an integral sector. Janzen hopes that the nation's leaders will use this information to form venture capital partnerships with companies or countries interested in finding new medicines or better crops, doing research, or even promoting ecotourism. Costa Rica already receives the biggest chunk of United States support for biodiversity efforts. In 1989, government agencies, foundations, and nongovernment organizations spent $6.2 million there. According to a recent survey by the World Resources Institute, that support comes primarily through work sponsored by the Organization for Tropical Studies at the La Selva Biological Station, two large projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and two debt-for-nature swaps in which payback on international loans was forgiven in return for an equivalent investment in conservation by that country. Only by turning a profit will this product line--biodiversity--survive, Janzen says. With a national budget of nearly $1 billion, Costa Rica cannot finance its conservation efforts solely through its tax base, he says. And aid from other countries, conservation organizations, and private foundations are "one-night stands," he adds. That's why Janzen is convinced that the country's 12,000 square kilometers of national reserves must become self-sustaining. "From the very beginning, every penny is devoted to making the system pay for itself," he explains. Because Costa Rica is already overcrowded, he says, "if they [the national parks] don't produce, the country is dead." --E.P. Scientists from many fields--museum curators, conservationists, field biologists, even mathematical modelers--are being swept up in this tide. Opportunities abound, including new and larger sources of research funding from both the public and private sector, additional jobs, and more graduate training programs. Abounding as well, however, are some considerable challenges. Those already working in the field must reconcile differences in their approach to the subject, as well as cope with trends that could force them to change the way they carry out their work. "What the flurry of interest is really associated with is the putting together of a big cluster of information to work for society in some way," says Dan Janzen, an entomologist from the University of Pennsylvania who has been active in setting up biodiversity preserves in Costa Rica (see Close-Up on page 9). "It's both a scientific challenge and a policy challenge." Among recent developments are: Two bills in Congress (HR585 and S58) that would authorize $10 million to create a National Biodiversity Center. By June, the Smithsonian Institution plans to release a report examining the structure for such a center; The National Research Council is about to assess the need for a National Institutes of the Environment. The proposed NIE would include an institute on biotic resources and would support the training each year of 30 specialists in biodiversity (The Scientist, Nov. 12, 1990, page 1); This spring some 60 authorities on the subject are due to issue a report on how to administer the preservation of biodiversity on federal lands. The report is expected to "set a framework for moving ahead on the biodiversity issue," says David Blockstein, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for the NIE and one of the participants in the study. On the international scene, the World Resources Institute (WRI) reported last month that U.S. support of biological diversity projects in developing countries had grown to almost $63 million in 1989, an increase of 68 percent since 1987. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the United Nations Environment Program, and WRI have developed a Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Program that they hope will guide research programs and policy decisions in the next few years. Also last month, environmentalists from 100 countries met to continue work on a draft version of an international convention on biodiversity. In addition, there is a movement to ensure that biodiversity is a major item on the agenda of the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil, says Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. It's difficult to know how many jobs for scientists will grow out of this heightened concern for biodiversity. But a few new positions have already opened up within agencies and in developing countries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has hired several people during the past few years to examine this issue, and the agency is now searching for a senior scientist to direct the effort. The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) now has about 20 people working in biodiversity, up from just a handful several years ago. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History will soon name a director of its biodiversity programs. And a report due out this spring, entitled Biological Diversity on Federal Lands: Final Consensus Report of a Keystone Policy Dialogue, calls for the retraining of federal staff who deal with the subject as well as the hiring of additional experts. Janzen warns his colleagues that these jobs may not be right for those seeking a traditional academic research slot. "It's a growth industry," he says, "but whether it's academic scientists who will fill those slots is another question." Many researchers think that the next generation of biodiversity scientists will need to bring a new mix of skills to the task. Students interested in biodiversity must branch out and calculate what additional training--such as in business, foreign languages, political science, or economics--would make them most useful, according to Janzen. "The problems we face take multidisciplinary approaches," says Gary Hart-shorn, vice president for conservation science at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). When tropical plant ecologist Vickie Funk began working in 1983 in the Guianas, a remote region of South America, all she wanted to do was collect, identify, and catalog the poorly known vegetation there. There was no rush; nobody worried that those plants might one day disappear, because nothing much was happening that would affect their habitat. "The [region] was closed to just about everyone," she recalls. Not anymore. New governments in the territory are encouraging development and exploitation of the resources in the area, and her science could be threatened. "The [countries have] just about no setup for a national park system or for conservation," says Funk. "So a purely scientific project has become one of some urgency." As a response to the potentially devastating commercial activity, Funk has forged an alliance with conservationists. Working with the World Wildlife Fund and the Royal Museum in Canada, she and others are pursuing their scientific endeavors with an eye toward conservation and preservation as well. "This biodiversity issue has brought us together," she says. The project also has changed her perspective about her colleagues in conservation. "Before [we linked up] there was a lot of antagonism between the conservation people and the hard-core scientists," she says. Hard-core scientists tend to see conservation science as a lightweight enterprise, and one that lacks good data, she explains. That's why she was pleasantly surprised when she approached conservation groups and asked what they needed. "Data," they answered. Now she's trying to collect information in a form that is useful for their planning efforts as well as for her research. In return, conservationists are contributing to her long-term efforts by helping to set up national parks and educating Guianans about the importance of species preservation. One visible sign of that heightened awareness is a new biodiversity center on Guyana's university campus in Georgetown. --E.P. Academia is already responding to the need to create these hybrid scientists. The universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Missouri, along with Duke University in Durham, N.C., are setting up graduate programs that will train a cohort of biodiversity specialists. These institutions plan to educate scientists from developing countries as well. And at Harvard University, Mellon Professor of the Sciences E.O. Wilson is working with business school faculty to develop a program in which biodiversity will be looked at from an economic and social planning perspective as well as a biological one. These new investigators should have numerous venues to ply their expertise. According to the WRI report, entitled Investing in Biological Diversity: U.S. Research and Conservation Efforts in Developing Countries, the U.S. spent $62.9 million on almost 1,100 biodiversity projects in 127 developing countries in 1989. A little more than one-third of those funds went primarily to support research. Some $24 million was devoted to projects in systematics, basic ecosystem studies, and species' responses to disturbances. About $10 million was spent on 141 species inventories. This year, the National Science Foundation plans to spend $4 million on developing biological inventories of the species of life in regions to be preserved. The effort, the agency's first focused specifically on inventory and survey projects, drew $23 million worth of proposals. That heavy response is a reflection of the difficulty of getting such research funded. "They [inventories] are a necessary foundation to other kinds of work, but I guess you could say they were less sexy [than other biodiversity proposals]," says Mike Ivie, a program officer in systematic biology at NSF. Next year, AID expects to give $1.5 million to NSF, which plans to double its current investment of $3 million to support biodiversity research in developing countries. That AID contribution is part of $49 million AID hopes to spend on biodiversity projects worldwide to train scientists and to protect threatened environments, more than double what it spent two years ago. In addition, the U.N.'s World Bank has agreed to give out $250 million in grants over the next three years as part of its $1 billion Global Environment Facility Program. The money will provide incentives for governments to consider policies that protect habitats and species. Private foundations have also become quite active in biodiversity. In 1989, they donated $21.4 million for projects in developing countries, a sevenfold increase from 1987, according to the WRI report. About half of that money goes toward research. Much of this increase came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which provides half of all support from foundations. Other active groups include the Pew Charitable Trusts and the W. Alton Jones, Jessie Smith Noyes, and Mellon foundations. But not everyone is happy about the distribution of this funding. For example, taxonomists don't feel they are getting much help, says Frank H. Talbot, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. "There's been an uneven spread of funding, and systematists have been left out in the cold," he says. "But we need an understanding of what is being lost." This groundswell of activity is also placing new demands upon those trying to shape the direction of the field. Scientists are shifting their focus from pure science to conservation and, perhaps, even to commercialization of biodiversity. "What you have is a large number of academics [scientists] looking for ways to make their own efforts worth funding," says Janzen. "They seem to want to co-opt a movement." He argues that the scientific research must take a back seat to the need to preserve what habitat can be saved. In addition, he says, scientists need to be on the lookout for an economic justification for that preservation. "The reason for the inventories," he explains, "is so you know what raw materials will be there to use." This sentiment is echoed by conservation organizations. For example, WWF recently expanded its habitat and species preservation mission to include promoting the sustainable use of living resources. "We can't expect to have continued success without taking into account people's needs," says WWF's Hartshorn. Many believe that action is essential even if some of the data are missing. That philosophy has shaped what conservationists have done in Costa Rica in setting up a National Biodiversity Institute and establishing a network of preserved areas. "Instead of planning for years and years, we just went ahead and did it," says Janzen. "There is no emergency need for basic research," adds the Nature Conservancy's Jenkins. "The emergency need is for information required for practical applications." Comments like those disturb some academic researchers, who worry that bad decisions are being made for lack of a better understanding of what is really necessary to conserve biodiversity. "There's a huge amount of science needed," says Talbot. "We're interested in documenting and developing a picture of what species are there and to look at naming the species. And we're only 10 percent into that task." More data would also strengthen the credibility of those trying to preserve precious habitats and scarce species, these scientists argue. "We're not able to suggest what the best strategy would be," says Wilson. "But I suggest that first we are in very great need of biological inventories and expertise to identify hot spots and to put a much more positive face on the conservation movement." Likewise, many scientists are aghast at what seem like chaotic efforts to measure diversity. "Biodiversity should be a science on its own, which would feed conservation biology," Smithsonian entomologist Terry Erwin says. Because that has not happened, some researchers question whether the decisions being made have much scientific justification. "Numbers alone do not tell you about the importance of an area," adds Vickie Funk, curator in botany at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (See Close-Up on page 8). Funk is somewhat skeptical of efforts in which a team does a two-week sampling of just a few plant and animal groups and then proclaims the area's importance to biodiversity. "It seems like each week they are coming up with a new number for the highest biodiversity yet measured," she says. "I'd go about the whole study of biodiversity much more carefully." Even researchers more attuned to conservation have similar concerns. "We do not have the luxury of studying it [biodiversity] on an ad hoc basis," says Mercedes Foster, a research zoologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who is pressing for greater standardization of biodiversity inventories. "It is critical that the information be obtained in a form that can be compared with data from other areas." Many scientists are convinced that the gravity of the problem will lead to alliances between those now pursuing different paths. However, such change comes at a price. "The irony is that a highly academic, highly esoteric activity is becoming a commercial activity," says Janzen. In Costa Rica, Janzen seeks to know the species in order to do "phytochemical prospecting," that is, to look for new exploitable resources. "It's not a quest for knowledge," he adds. "I'm not saying `drop your curiosity,' but `think product' at the same time." Adds Hartshorn, "The key factor is getting academic scientists more involved in applications of their work."

Biodiversity Rides A Popular Wave

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of