The Case for Conservation Podcast

Apr 10 2025 57 ep. 46 mins 307

The Case for Conservation Podcast artwork

The case for conserving nature and its biodiversity needs to be robust and credible. Sometimes that requires a willingness to re-examine conventional wisdom.

Monthly episodes of The Case for Conservation Podcast feature introspective conversations with fascinating experts - from ecologists to economists, young professionals to Nobel laureates, journalists to media personalities.

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55. What's the risk of fads in conservation? (Kent Redford)

Apr 10 2025 35 mins

Conservation competes with a variety of other societal priorities and interests for funding and for attention. As a result, conservation projects, programmes and even broader concepts are frequently “packaged” in ways that prioritize grabbing attention. But promoting or marketing conservation initiatives in this way carries certain risks. Among them is the risk of being short-l

54. What does Trump 2.0 mean for the environment?

Mar 10 2025 41 mins

America’s reelection of Donald Trump has brought about all manner of changes in US and global politics. Some have a direct effect on environmental issues while many more may be indirectly consequential. The media, it seems, has reacted mostly with horror and predictions of disaster, and there are probably any number of commentators willing to echo those sentiments on a podcast. I

53. Shouldn't we reframe environmental narratives? (Ragini Prasad)

Feb 09 2025 39 mins

Among most legacy media outlets and on social media, narratives about environmental issues, as well as social issues, are noticeably more extreme than they used to be. From activists to academics and from organizations to corporations, it has become common to hear phrases like “shattering Earth's natural limits”, “ecological meltdown”, and “boiling oceans”. Much of this

52. What’s all the fuss about the EU Nature Restoration Law? (Brian MacSharry)

Jan 13 2025 43 mins

It’s not often that biodiversity legislation grabs international headlines, but thats what happened repeatedly in 2024 with the European Union’s new Nature Restoration Law. It happened first because of the ambitious nature of the law; and then because of the political tussle around its rejection and eventual approval. Along the way it gathered a trail of detractors and supporte

51. What's all this talk about biodiversity credits? (Harrison Carter)

Dec 13 2024 45 mins

From time to time certain concepts rise to prominence in biodiversity conservation circles, and some of these follow in the footsteps of climate change analogs. One such concept is biodiversity credits. Biodiversity credits are a mechanism that allow for biodiversity conservation or restoration activities to derive a revenue stream through the production and sale of a quantifiable

50. How do we get to a more sustainable society? (Sharachchandra Lele)

Nov 11 2024 58 mins

Half a century ago a group of more than 2,000 scientists signed a warning of environmental crisis and nuclear war. Named after the French town where it was compiled, the “Menton Message” turned out to be somewhat hyperbolic in its environmental predictions, and did not account for some of humankind’s remarkable developmental progress over the following decades. However, some

49. Should we worry about zombie organizations? (Julia Gray)

Oct 07 2024 42 mins

International organizations, or “IOs” for short, are typically organizations to which multiple countries belong as members. They cover virtually every aspect of human endeavor and there are many that are related to environmental protection. International organizations may influence our lives quite profoundly and yet, outside our own field, we might struggle to name more than a

48. What about free market environmentalism? (Ronald Bailey)

Sep 02 2024 45 mins

Protection of the environment is strongly associated with regulation of the human activities that threaten it, and regulation is usually administered by government. Although almost everyone would probably agree that some regulation is necessary, regulation has a patchy record when it comes to environmental protection. And there is another approach to achieving environmental goals.

47. Why is whaling still... a thing? (Joji Morishita)

Aug 05 2024 59 mins

There are few environmental issues more emotive than the hunting of whales. Although the focus of environmentalists has shifted to other topics in recent times, whaling remains contentious whenever it is brought up. This is understandable considering that, for the first half of the 20th century and into the 1970s, several whale species were hunted to near-extinction. But as crude o

46. Can agriculture become nature-friendly at scale? (Philippe Birker)

Jul 06 2024 46 mins

Agriculture has been by far the biggest driver of land change and land degradation worldwide. And yet, it is also fundamental to the very existence of humankind. This mismatch often comes up in public discourse. Over the past year or two, for example, several European countries have seen extensive farmer protests - against rising costs and restrictive environmental regulations, amo