Season 3, Episode 13: Abby

In this episode of Climate Action Figures, hosted by John Whidden, guest Abby shares her experience from a science and leadership course in Costa Rica. Abby discusses the impactful conservation efforts by Osa Conservation, focusing on creating wildlife corridors and integrating sustainable agricultural practices with local communities. She emphasizes the interconnectedness of strong biodiversity and combating climate change. Abby also shares her unique approach to reducing unnecessary AI usage in Google searches. The episode concludes with an inspiring story from a community garden that highlights the power of human connection in challenging misinformation and fostering inclusive dialogue.

We 00:00 Introduction and QuickFix from Heather

01:11 Meet Abby and Her Costa Rica Experience

03:22 The Science and Leadership Course

04:27 Osa Conservation and Community-Based Efforts

15:27 Challenges and Learnings in Costa Rica

18:06 Abby's Climate Action and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

Abby 0:00

Hi, I am Abby, and you're tuned in to Climate Action Figures. Well, hello and welcome to this week's edition of Climate Action Figures. My name as always is John Whidden, and this week on the show you get to meet Abby. This week's QuickFix is from Heather who says: while listening to the Climate Action Figures podcast last season, a young lady from Indonesia, that by the way was in season two, if you want to go check it out. It occurred to me that I've got a small and simple action: write to your elected officials. How are they supposed to know what we want if we don't tell them? Be sure to include your address so they know you are a constituent. My MLA(says Heather) said that in his first 10 years in office, he had three constituents voice concerns to him about climate change. Democracy calls on us to do much more than simply vote once every four years. Wise words from Heather. Thanks for sharing that, and welcome Abby. Hi. Nice to be here.

John 1:14

What do you think about that QuickFix?

Abby 1:16

I really like it. I could always do more, but I definitely do bug my, my MLA quite a bit, so it's definitely like a good thing to do. especially since I'm from more of a conservative riding, so I often have a lot to say to my MLAs.

John 1:30

Interesting. That three messages in 10 years

Abby 1:33

Mm-hmm.

John 1:33

change. That's amazing. And uh, I remember hearing once someone said every letter or email that gets written to a representative, counts for something like 50 or a hundred opinions because they know there are that many people out there that think the same thing, that just don't bother to

Abby 1:49

write in, so

John 1:50

an important thing to do.

Abby 1:52

Yeah.

John 1:52

Now, uh, speaking of media, CBC Radio has this wonderful science columnist named Torah Kachur. And a few months ago I was listening to an interview with her that grabbed my attention because she was in Costa Rica with 24 students teaching a course. So I reached out to Torah and she connected us. Thanks Torah for doing that. What a place for an outdoor classroom, uh, you were part of this experience. Tell us a little bit about it.

Abby 2:17

Yeah, it was definitely my favorite course I've ever done. Um, it was incredible. It was two weeks deep in the jungles in Costa Rica. It was about a 10 hour drive from San Jose. So it was quite remote and it was really incredible. It was, everywhere you look, there's a new species, a new creature you've never seen before, so it was really, really incredible that way.

John 2:39

Being that far in the jungle, did you get to hear howler monkeys?

Abby 2:42

Yes. I thought they sounded like the monsters from the last of us, the show. They sound

John 2:48

yes.

Abby 2:49

terrifying in my opinion, but yeah, they start screaming at 2:00 AM and sometimes you can hear them running around right outside the dorm and, but eventually you get used to it and you get through it.

John 2:58

Wow. They feel, they sound like a lion or a

Abby 3:01

Yeah. Like something very odd. Yeah.

John 3:03

Were you prepared for it or

Abby 3:05

No.

John 3:06

warn you or

Abby 3:06

No,

John 3:07

that we're being attacked?

Abby 3:09

I thought we were being attacked. No one warned us. And it was like the first night we were there and you wake up in, in the middle of the night and something's screaming at you from outside.

John 3:17

Well, this

Abby 3:17

Yeah.

John 3:17

an amazing experience. I have a lot of questions, but let's get to the educational

Abby 3:21

Mm-hmm.

John 3:22

So tell us about the, the course itself. What was that about? I.

Abby 3:25

Mm-hmm. So this was a science and leadership course that was designed by Dr. Kachur. So it was a really unique course, and that wasn't just. A science focused course. It was more of talking about global problems and all of the different things that go into these problems. Torah, I like to say that these aren't science problems, they're people problems. And so, for example, like climate change, we have scientific solutions for it. but it's not enough to actually enact change. There are people problems. There's all these different systems that are at play here, when we think about solutions. So it was very much more a holistic course focused on how do we think about these issues in sort of a systems thinking kind of way and go about them in evidence-based ways, scientific ways, but also ways that kind of consider the human impact and kind of the full problem in its entirety.

John 4:17

I can see that the truth in, in those statements about the people

Abby 4:21

Mm-hmm.

John 4:22

how did being in Costa Rica help to really emphasize that?

Abby 4:27

A lot of the work that Osa Conservation does is very community-based and on the ground. Osa Conservation campus is where we were staying. They do a lot of research there on biodiversity and trying to build these wildlife corridors across the country. But a big thing that my project was actually looking at was. Agricultural land and how the farmers in Costa Rica like need the agricultural land. That's their main livelihood. You can't come in there and say, oh, you actually have to give up this percentage of your land so that we can build a wildlife corridor through it, because, that's not fair. That's not feasible for them. That's how they make their living. So a really interesting thing that Osa Conservation does is like builds these, and I, I interviewed people that were working there that worked with farmers over years to build these relationships with them so that they would come up with solutions that allow the farmers to still sort of make a profit while still building a wildlife corridor through their property. So like one example that comes to mind is: if you had like a cattle farmer or like someone who is doing monoculture farming, even just building like, like vanilla trees or right on the side of their property so that monkeys can swing through the trees and reach the other side of your property. That's a really interesting way that the farmers can still make a profit and it will still benefit them, and then also have this incredible wildlife corridor so that you have a more interconnected landscape. So that's just one example like. Tying in like people's needs and requirements into the Conservation work that they're doing. It's really interesting.

John 5:59

We're going to talk more about your project later. I just want to point out, I think we've not mentioned yet that you are at the University of Alberta.

Abby 6:06

Yes.

John 6:07

And Osa, is it, some sort of a satellite campus, or is it a

Abby 6:10

Costa

John 6:11

Rican thing, or how does that all fit

Abby 6:13

Um, so I, Osa is A NGO. It's not affiliated with the U of A., and they actually host a lot of different schools from around the world there including high schools. They have a lot of educational kind of programs. So our course, which was from the U of A, we visited the Osa Conservation Campus, which is kind of their educational hub. But they have a lot of different kind of areas around Costa Rica. we were on the OSA Peninsula just in the far like southwest of the country.

John 6:41

And the Osa Peninsula, if I recall, is known for being one of the most biodiverse places on earth.

Abby 6:47

Yes.

John 6:48

Did you get a sense of why... am I correct? First of all.

Abby 6:51

Oh, absolutely. I think it's like 2.5% of the world's biodiversity is just on that one peninsula. Yeah.

John 6:57

amazing. Did you get a sense when you were down there of why that is? Why, why is there such an enormous, not only concentration, but a concentration of biodiversity that has been protected?

Abby 7:08

Costa Rica actually has from when I know, a pretty good track record of kind of prioritizing Conservation. So for the last several decades it's really been a priority there to have these protected areas and to conserve that biodiversity that is so high in that part of the world. It for sure was incredible to see. Like just walking out the door, you see like 10 different species of insects that you've never seen before. And our teaching assistant was an entomologist, and he was going nuts. Every single bug he saw was: everyone stop. Look at this! This is, and then he would name the species and everything. So it was pretty amazing. Yeah, there's an incredible amount of biodiversity there, and you just, you can't escape it. It's like in your room the bugs crawling at the door and everything,.

John 7:52

If I'm not mistaken, I, I think Costa Rica actually doesn't have its own army, so it seems like they, they're focusing their, their energy and their money into, preserving ecosystems, animals, plant life. You know, they've got an amazing number of parks. Did you get a sense when you were down there of why they have decided to do it? They're so different than all the other Central American countries where a lot of the landscape has just been chopped down for firewood or for planting crops. Did you get any ideas about why they have done that and how they've done that?

Abby 8:26

I don't have a great idea of like why they've done it. I didn't do a, a lot of research into like the history and the sociopolitical context there. But how they've done it I mean that too, I don't have a lot of knowledge on that, but they do have, you're right, they have an immense number of national parks or protected areas and with organizations like OSA kind of helping that out and trying to really work. Right now they're trying to work to really connect those parks to each other so that, um, species can kind of withstand the change in climate and expand into new ranges

John 9:00

Did you see any negative or positive impacts on them spending so much of their, energy and money on preserving?

Abby 9:07

We interviewed I forget the gentleman's name, but someone who was working there, who was working with these farmer, with farmers in Costa Rica for a very long time. And he said that actually there are Conservation efforts specifically in regards to agriculture and building these wildlife corridors up from kind of the lower elevations up to the highest kind of altitude in Costa Rica. It actually had really positive impacts for a lot of the farmers there. Because many of their strategies benefited the farmers. They were, if they moved from doing a monoculture to doing kind of a different setup where they had different kinds of crops, that's an alternative income source for those farmers. Or if you're have a new kind of water system that you're kind of putting in or protecting in those farmlands, then that's going to benefit your farm and the soil health and everything like that. So, that's kind of what I noticed that was most striking to me was their conservation work seemed to be really, really integrated into the community and prioritizing that community wellbeing. What they said is they don't push anything on the farmers. It's up to the farmer to kind of decide how much they want. I even heard a story that once, someone that they were working with said, you can put up ornamental bushes in this part of my land. And that was it. That's all they wanted. So that's what they did. And they respected that. Like you might think, oh, like really? What's that going to do to help? Conserve biodiversity just some ornamental shrubs. But actually because they did that, they didn't push very hard. I was told like after a couple years, that person reached back out to them and said, okay, I have this part of land that I'm not doing anything with, so you guys can have it right and like build whatever you'd like there. That was kind of the story that I remember.

John 10:44

Again, it's that human

Abby 10:45

yeah,

John 10:46

whole issue. Right.

Abby 10:47

for sure.

John 10:48

we're kind of getting back into the, into the zone of your project now. So, uh, as you look back on the project you did down there, uh, tell us a little bit more about it and what were your big takeaways.

Abby 10:58

My project it's a group project I did with two lovely fellow students Joe and Aidan. It was about mitigating biodiversity loss that you often see with agricultural expansion. So, the three of us came from different backgrounds, but all had like a really special places in our hearts for agriculture and food systems. So that's kind of why we were really drawn to that topic. In a class where we were allowed to pick any global problem. And so it was really special to get to go to Costa Rica and work with this organization that has been doing so much in this kind of field. Like looking at how can we continue to expand our agricultural systems to meet the growing needs of our population, our sky rocketing population, actually helping out with Conservation efforts along the way.

John 11:47

So Abby, as you studied the way they use land down there, the way they conserve land you talk about corridors and the importance of corridors. Tell us more about why corridors are so important, because I think that applies here as well as in Costa Rica, right.

Abby 12:03

For sure. So that's a really big mission of Osa Conservation, is building these wildlife corridors that connect the very biodiverse areas kind of closer to the coast, up into kind of the higher elevation areas of the country. And it's really important for a couple of reasons. The first is that some really important keystone species, large predators like jaguars, which are endangered, they need like very large ranges in order to thrive because their territories don't, can't really overlap with each other. So they need to have these large in interconnected kind of regions of protected natural landscapes. But these keystone species that kind of have these cascading effects on the rest of the ecosystem to keep it healthy and to make all of the species kind of thrive, they need to have connected landscapes. Then another big reason is that these areas of the world are most at risk of rising sea levels and these terrible kind of risks that we're facing with climate change. And so there needs to be a way for the species that are currently living very close to the coast to actually expand their ranges. Because we're kind of at a point now where that is likely going to have to happen. So having a kind of interconnected corridor that will take them up to the higher elevation areas of the country offers almost like an escape route so that they can expand and still continue to survive in that kind of future that we're facing down, unfortunately.

John 13:26

And that does apply here too,

Abby 13:27

Mm-hmm. For sure.

John 13:28

You kind of jumped my next question, which is great. Uh, which was going to be, you know, we're focused in this podcast on mitigating climate change and, positive things that young people are doing to, to do that. is there any other way that connects strongly to biodiversity, maintaining a strong biodiversity, what does that have to do with climate change in your opinion?

Abby 13:51

Well, there's sort of like a feedback loop going on. If you have strong biodiversity, you have strong ecosystems. It's expected your soil health is going to be better, you're going to have more resilient communities. I'm going to go back to the agricultural framework'cause that's what I'm most familiar with. So if you have a very robust ecosystem and there's lots of bug species, different kinds of pollinators in the area. You're going to have a thriving kind of agricultural setup. But if you are farming like large, large monocultures and you're over exploiting the soil, you're going to have more soil erosion and kind of less. Yield from your crops. And so as, as a result, you're going to have to eventually start expanding your crops so that you can still get the yield, so that you can still have that income and so that we can still feed people, right? So if that kind of feedback loop continues and as you expand that monoculture, it's just going to get worse and worse for biodiversity. It's like a snowball effect. If we don't change our practices now in a way that supports biodiversity, pollinators, et cetera then we're looking at having over exploitation of land and more resource intensive practices that could really accelerate climate change. One really kind of close tie would be if you're farming near the coast, for example, and you need to start using more fertilizers in your soil because your soil is very arid, it doesn't have the right invertebrate species to kind of maintain it. That fertilizer is going to run off into the ocean or to nearby water sources and contribute to eutrofication. it's such an interconnected system that conserving biodiversity is definitely part of how we need to kind of approach climate change action, in my opinion. and that was very evidenced in Costa Rica.

John 15:27

Before we leave the whole Costa Rica experience we talked about howler monkeys and you talked about the amazing biodiversity, all the bugs and things. There must have been some of the bugs that were fascinating and other ones that were kind of annoying or challenging is that so?

Abby 15:44

I, I liked the bugs. I gained a new appreciation for bugs there. Our TA was amazing. He was like, he would gently pick up a little bug and be like, oh, this one's poisonous. And you're like, you're holding it. But yeah, it was very cool. There's, I believe, four different species of monkeys where we were staying. The Capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and I'm not remembering the fourth one but those were also really, really incredible to see. So many different, like very charismatic species. I didn't know there was two kinds of toucan birds. There are, and I have both of them, in one image. So that was really amazing.

John 16:21

They truly are amazing birds, aren't they? Because

Abby 16:24

Oh yes.

John 16:24

how can that actually

Abby 16:26

How did this evolve? perch there without falling,

John 16:28

forward?

Abby 16:29

for sure.

John 16:30

And I learned as I'm sure you did, that it's that the bill is actually this kind of foamy

Abby 16:35

Mm-hmm.

John 16:36

That doesn't weigh much at all. Otherwise they would just fall on their face

Abby 16:38

They would.

John 16:40

So nothing really challenged you? You know, snakes, spiders, there's usually something that

Abby 16:45

The snakes were a bit of a challenge because, so we actually had to wear rain boots anytime we left the campus, which when it's like 30 degrees outside is kind of a lot long pants and rain boots. Um, because there are snakes in that area that. If they bite you, like it can be deadly. And there's actually some rules around if you're within, I believe it's like four hours driving distance of a medical center, you're actually not allowed to have the anti-venom on hand. I think probably because of scarcity. So, that was a little scary at times.'Cause you, you would walk and you would see the snakes on the trail and they're the same color as the, as the ground and you're like, oh, I hope I don't step on one.

John 17:25

And you were bit by too many of the insects.

Abby 17:28

Uh, I wasn't, I don't think I was bit by anything actually.

John 17:31

Oh,

Abby 17:32

So. Yeah. Like, I don't even, there wasn't even like mosquito mosquitoes here are worse than down there, honestly.

John 17:37

Wow. Well, thank you for telling us all about this wonderful experience, and I'm sure you would encourage others to explore these kind of possibilities that are outside the four walls of the classroom, right?

Abby 17:47

Oh, for sure.

John 17:48

And thanks to great teachers and educators like Torah, who do these crazy things that give us these opportunities. As an educator myself, I love to hear about these wonderful experiences that people are having outdoors in various places around home or around the world. Now, before we let you go, we have to ask you, Abby, about your climate action. What have you chosen for us today?

Abby 18:11

It's a little bit silly. I've just been trying to add to the end of all my Google search queries like-AI because, if you add-AI, it doesn't give you the AI overview. So it kind of limits the extraneous AI usage that, it's just not really necessary. I hate that there's no button you can toggle to just turn it off, but that's kind of my main thing is I'm trying to do that.

John 18:32

I love that climate action because I thought I was the only one who did

Abby 18:35

Yeah.

John 18:36

I do it, I think I must be the only one who's

Abby 18:37

Only one who knows this. Yeah.

John 18:39

So there you go, people, if you put a little minus sign and AI, and then we've talked about this on the program before. AI takes so much energy and water why are we using it on every single search and why is there not a way we can switch it off? Google! I'm sure someone from Google's watching the podcast. Right. So, uh, if we could get a fix for that, that would be great. There is a way I have discovered on Chrome, which is my main browser that I use, that you can, if you look it up online, how to make it do that without asking every time,-AI. My Chrome browser, when I Google something actually doesn't have that AI result every time. So there is, there is some way to do that. Last question for you, Abby: what gives you hope?

Abby 19:20

That's a good question. I was thinking about it and I think it's, it's a specific moment I had this summer where I was, I volunteer at a community garden right by my house, and we host educational programs there, so we have farmers and just local educators come in and kind of teach anyone that wants to stop by different gardening techniques about pollinators and beekeeping and stuff like that. And what gave me hope was one day we were like weeding and I was weeding beside this older woman who pointed over at her husband, who was like sitting and just picking weeds. And she said: when we're at home, he watches so much like hateful kind of media. Like he's very much in like, Fox News, kind of in that kind of spiral. But he comes here and he actually talks to people and it's so much better for him and he's able to actually like, connect with people that he would never otherwise connect with. And kind of, it's helping him kind of call out. things that he's seeing online or on his tv, which really aren't true. Right? So it's really helping him reconnect with his neighbours and with real life and helping him detach from all of that. That gave, that gave me hope because it's good to see that there's still ways that people can kind of have their minds changed or kind of open their hearts to their community a little bit.

John 20:38

A very hope filled message for us to wrap up. Thanks so much for joining us today, Abby.

Abby 20:43

Thanks for having me.

John 20:45

And thank you dear listener and viewer. If you love or even just put up with Climate Action Figures, please hit the like or subscribe on social media as it helps get the word out. We will be back again next week, same time, same place to hear from another climate action figure. Until then.

Abby 21:02

Go Figures!