Organic, of course!

Species conservation has nothing to do with business success? On the contrary, says Thomas Crowther from ETH Zurich. The biodiversity expert knows: “When nature flourishes, the economy flourishes, too.”

Mr Crowther, in concrete terms: where has biodiversity played a role in your private life recently?
Last weekend, I slept under the open sky. I do that almost every week. I love spending as much time as possible outside. I simply pack my hammock and a bush knife and head into the woods of Studberg, around 70 kilometres south-east of Zurich. Then I sit there by my little fire and watch nature. If you get involved, you can discover so much. Not just the many different trees and plants. If you look very closely, you can see how many different types of moss there are, how many different insects. That is truly remarkable. You just have to take time for nature and build a relationship with it.

Is that what we are missing, a relationship with nature?
I think so. I remember how, when I was a child, we spent a summer vacation in France with another family. While the others were romping around in the garden, I was interested in a wall on which several lizards were crawling around. I sat in front of the wall for hours, staring at these nimble creatures. At one point, the other family’s grandmother asked my parents if there was anything wrong with me. My father couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He asked: what’s wrong with the rest of us? We should all be fascinated by nature and appreciate its beauty. I was still very young at the time, but my father’s words strengthened my appreciation of nature.

What use are lizards?
Lizards are predators – and predators are indispensable across all ecosystems. Without tigers and jaguars, for example, some animals would eat too many plants in the rainforest and the forest would no longer be able to regenerate. Lizards fulfil the same task, they are basically the predators of the undergrowth. They regulate insect populations, including the pests that would otherwise graze all the vegetation on the ground. Without lizards, the number of invertebrates in the soil could explode, the organic material would decompose much faster and send more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn would drive global warming. Lizards and similar predators, such as snakes, are therefore not only important for maintaining the balance in a small part of the ecosystem, they also play a role in the development of the climate.

How?
Climate and biodiversity are interlinked: when species die out, ecosystems can collapse, which in turn fuels the climate crisis. And the climate crisis is creating worse conditions for living creatures. A vicious circle. Apart from that, biodiversity is the foundation of all our livelihoods. Biodiversity alone gives us the air we breathe, clean drinking water and food. The planet would be uninhabitable without it. If nature did not provide these services, our economic system would collapse and with it our entire civilisation. The loss of habitats can also pose a major threat. When humans encroach on animal territory, the risk of infectious diseases increases, which can quickly develop into a pandemic. The biodiversity crisis is therefore a much broader threat than many believe.

Many people use the term biodiversity as a synonym for species diversity, thinking of animals, insects and plants.
That's right – but simultaneously too short-sighted. The diversity of animal and plant species in the world is just one aspect. It is also about the genetic richness within individual species and the diversity of ecosystem structures across the globe. Overall, it is about the diversity of all living organisms, habitats and ecosystems. This also includes, for example, microbes that live in the depths of the oceans. We cannot see them, but their existence has a major influence on marine life, the composition of the atmosphere and the climate.

Is it a problem for biodiversity that we cannot see and understand it in its entirety?
Absolutely. We may notice when forests disappear, glaciers break off or animal species become extinct. Many people may understand that something is about to go wrong. But the world of microbes and bacteria is just as threatened as all other ecosystems. For a very long time, we were unable to count them and include them in statistics. And for a long time, believed that we cannot save what we cannot measure. That was wrong.

Has it changed?
We have indeed made great progress in the last ten years. Digitalisation has enabled us to collect and compare much more data than before. Now, we can measure not only the complexity of ecosystems or their carbon content but also their health and the genetic variation of microbes. Generally speaking, the more complex a system is, the healthier it is. This completely changes our understanding of biodiversity.

What do you mean?
For far too long, we humans have focused on the superficial benefits of nature: the provision of wood as a building material, natural fibres as the basis for textiles, plants for the production of medicines and food. We have instrumentalised these things for our own purposes and neglected the supposedly superfluous rest of nature. Thanks to new measurement and calculation technologies, however, we are now able to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the big picture – the connections and interactions within ecosystems. We now realise that every part of nature, no matter how tiny, is incredibly important. This knowledge will play a major role in protecting biodiversity.

How can other technologies contribute to preserving biodiversity?
Mobile measuring devices that register the emission of greenhouse gases and forward the data immediately are very helpful, of course. At ETH Zurich, we have even developed our own index, the SEED programme, which maps the biological complexity and health of every ecosystem on earth. We combine satellite images, which allow us to zoom in to within 30 meters of the Earth's surface, with close-up images from drones and physical DNA and acoustic data from more than 130,000 locations.

But measurement data alone does not necessarily lead to a change.
That's right. Technology can only help to open our eyes and create the necessary transparency so that we can better understand the impact of our actions and recognise where there is room for improvement. For example, when shopping, there could be a QR code on every product that you can scan to see immediately whether the product was produced using ingredients from a monoculture, perhaps even with the use of pesticides, or whether it comes from regenerative agriculture that supports biodiversity. We have had the technology for this for a long time. We just have to use it. Imagine if we could enable billions of people to make better decisions when shopping or in their everyday lives …

But the responsibility should not lie solely with consumers. That is why, at the end of 2022, the European Union adopted the CSR Directive, which will oblige around 50,000 companies to disclose their sustainability efforts in the coming years. Protection and the impact on biodiversity also play a role here. What do you think of this requirement?
In principle, I think this is a really good development. But if organisations are given incentives to promote only certain aspects of nature, be it carbon sequestration in spruce trees or the successful establishment of butterflies in fields, that won’t be enough. I would therefore like to encourage the development of a framework that promotes the entire complexity of nature, not just individual parts. That would genuinely be of great benefit.

How do you assess the situation in Switzerland?
Switzerland has a wide range of ecosystem types. The country is a world leader in their management and in forestry; it has the potential for strong biodiversity. And the Swiss have a great appreciation for biodiversity in forests and alpine landscapes. I think that’s great. But here too, nature is under extreme threat from climate change, forest fires, pest infestation and land use. In 2023, the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment published a report stating that half of the habitats and a third of the species are threatened. A rather unsatisfactory situation, as in most European countries.

A few weeks ago, the EU passed a hard-fought renaturation law.
A huge step forward. And many people are not even aware of what this means for our economy. After all, biodiversity is also very important for agricultural productivity in Europe. Our institute will publish a study this year. In this study, we were able to show that agricultural yields have increased significantly in all European countries where nature has been able to recover somewhat over the past 30 years. Natural richness is therefore directly linked to financial returns. When nature flourishes, the economy flourishes too.

However, this will not bring back the countless species and habitats that we have already lost.
Unfortunately not. Nature cannot simply be repaired like a broken car. But just because we’ve already broken so much doesn’t mean we can simply stop working for a better planet. Life on this planet has never been easy. In the course of evolution, species have repeatedly become extinct and new ones have emerged. If we turn things around now, we can prevent things from getting even worse. I am very optimistic about this. Even if climate change and biodiversity loss weren’t happening, I would be just as motivated.

This interview is a product of the CP editorial team of brand eins Medien AG, Hamburg, on behalf of Migros Pioneer Fund.
Concept, editing and responsibility for the content: Margitta Schulze Lohoff
Text: Laslo Seyda (fr)
Design: Deborah Tyllack
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