How Data Changed the Climate Conversation

How Data Changed the Climate Conversation
Host: Wolfgang Fengler
Guest: Sir Andrew Steer KCMG, PhD

How did climate and nature move from the sidelines to the center of global economic decision-making—and what role did data play in that shift?

In this episode of Data Talks, Wolfgang Fengler speaks with Sir Andrew Steer KCMG, PhD—former President & CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund (2021–2025), former President & CEO of the World Resources Institute, and now Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics’ Global School of Sustainability.

Andrew reflects on key turning points in the evolution of environmental economics, including the rise of “natural capital” and the growing demand for evidence-based climate policy. The conversation explores today’s most important data innovations—from satellite and AI-enabled monitoring of forests and carbon stocks to the emerging ability to detect methane emissions from space—and why better measurement doesn’t automatically translate into better action.

They close with a powerful set of numbers about biodiversity loss and the future of development, and what it will take to turn climate data into durable progress.

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Data Talks is produced by World Data Lab, bringing global data to life through insights, conversations, and stories that matter.

Transcript

0:13: Welcome, Andrew Steer. 
 0:14: Welcome, Andrew Steer to Data Talks. 
 0:17: This is the first edition of the new year. 
 0:19: It's a very special privilege to be with Andrew Steer. 
 0:22: His CV is so long, I can't give you all the details. 
 0:24: We'll talk about it, but Andrew is the leader, one of the leaders in the world on nature, climate, and biodiversity. 
 0:30: Welcome, Andrew. 
 0:32: Thank you very much, Wolfgang. 
 0:34: it's a great honor to be here. 
 0:35: I love what you're doing in the World Data Lab, and I love your podcast. 
 0:39: So, what could be better than that? 
 0:41: That's fantastic, Andrew, and you are still, we're friends. 
 0:44: We've known each other for a long time. 
 0:45: I just actually thought about it. 
 0:46: It was 2003 that we met the first time, but since we spoke last time, you became Sir Andrew Steer, so it's even a special honor. 
 0:55: Tell us what, what happened? 
 0:56: What, what do you need to do to become Sir? 
 0:59: Well, you need to live to become a great age, and just do lots of different things, I think. 
 1:05: no, it is a great honor actually to,, to be recognized by His Majesty King Charles, and, but, just as I'm sure you would say when you look at your amazing achievements, they're actually not yours, they're the teams that you've worked with. 
 1:23: And that's exactly what I feel like and I look back to when you and I worked in Indonesia together and you think about the, wonderful, things we were able to deliver together. 
 1:36: Although, thank you, Andrew, for saying this, and indeed this was still treasures and special moments when we worked together in Indonesia. 
 1:42: And, maybe just in brief for the audience, so there's a few of them in basically my environment and don't know you yet so well. 
 1:50: we, you have many stages in your career. 
 1:52: we'll talk about the environment in a minute, but with the World Bank, with WRI Bus Earth Fund, and now with LSE and the Royal Botanical Gardens. 
 2:01: Just tell us a little bit about that whole journey that you have been part of. 
 2:05: Well, I started out, as a, as an economist, teaching at the university, did my PhD, joined the World Bank, as a macroeconomist. 
 2:16: and it was actually while I was there, I realized that we were missing something with regard to. 
 2:21: To, the natural world. 
 2:23: We talked a lot about, human-made capital, factories and bridges and airports and so on and roads, but we didn't talk about natural capital. 
 2:33: And so it became clear to me that we needed to do something on that. 
 2:37: So I, had a great privilege of, leading the Environment department of the World Bank and then leading, World Bank activities in, in East Asia, And then, then joining the British government as Director General of what was then DFID. 
 2:53: , it's now part of, FCDO, and then, became special envoy to the, for climate to the World Bank, and then, then, became a president CEO of the World Resource Institute, which is a wonderful organization, of, we, we now have about 12 offices around the world, about 2000 people doing really fascinating work. 
 3:16: And then, Jeff Bezos kindly called me up and said,, he had created, a, a, a, a, a fund, $10 billion to be given away as grants, this decade, and would I be interested in coming and leading that. 
 3:32: So for 4 wonderful years, I worked there and now, I'm a professor at the London School of Economics and at Georgetown University and doing some other pretty interesting things, I hope, on nature and just, becoming the, the chair of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. 
 3:51: Wow. 
 3:52: those who know Andrew, know one thing. 
 3:55: Andrew will never stop, and, that's an inspiration, Andrew, and though you will never stop, the World Bank retirement age was always a pain on some of us, and so I think we'll overcome that. 
 4:06: I want to do two things in this podcast, and it's, the structure we also use a look backward and a bit forward. 
 4:12: Today, we are, obviously, climate change is all around us, the climate data, the climate discussions. 
 4:19: When you started, it was not the case. 
 4:21: So tell us a bit, walk us back to the 1990s. 
 4:24: I just checked it out in 1992, the World Development Report on the Environment Director Andrew Steer, tell us about that time and how you started to shape that environmental science agenda. 
 4:37: Well, even before that time, actually, I, I was, an economist, working in the World Bank office in Jakarta. 
 4:46: the president of the World Bank, back then, this was in the late, 1980s, I suppose. 
 4:54: he visited and, and, and, Indonesia was then the only developing country that had a minister of the Environment who sat in the cabinet. 
 5:04: And the president of the World Bank met him at some reception, and this, this guy's name was Emil Salim, and he said, Look, Mr. 
 5:12: President of the World Bank, I'm a member of the cabinet, but quite frankly, nobody really listens to me. 
 5:18: Tomorrow, Mr. 
 5:19: President of the World Bank, you will be meeting with the entire cabinet and with President Suharto. 
 5:25: It would be incredibly helpful if you could say to the President how wonderful it is that there is a Minister of Environment in the cabinet. 
 5:33: And it's hard to believe this, but the, and I was there because I was sort of carrying the bags of the president of the World Bank, and the president of the World Bank, I said, I'm awfully sorry, sir. 
 5:42: We can't do that because we're a development institution. 
 5:45: We're not an environment institution. 
 5:47: You'd have to talk to an environmental agency. 
 5:49: And that was one of the kind of aha moments, a pivot moment in my professional life, and I'm sure we all have them. 
 5:56: And because I've just been doing lots of work on the sources of growth in Indonesia, and Indonesia was doing great. 
 6:02: It was growing at 7.5% a year, which in those days was the fastest growing big country in the world. 
 6:08: And I'd come to the conclusion actually that a lot of that growth, probably 40 or 50% of it, was because they were running down their natural capital. 
 6:15: They were pumping out their oil and gas, and they were cutting down their trees. 
 6:18: And, and, and, and I, I thought there's something, we're missing something here. 
 6:22: And so that led to a lot of, intellectual sort of, engagement on my part as we thought about obviously, man-made or human fabricated capital, and then human capital, education, health, skills, natural capital, and then social capital. 
 6:40: And it's only if we understand those four kinds of capital, we can understand the development process and Wolfgang, you are, are being. 
 6:47: Deeply engaged in that yourself. 
 6:50: and so we need to, when we think about data, we need to think about sort of all four kinds of capital if we are to understand progress. 
 6:57: And then, of course, what happened was, this, this was the era of what was called the, the Bruntland report, on, which was the first major UN Secretary General sponsored report on the relationship between the natural world and economic development that led to the Earth Summit. 
 7:16: , in 1992, and I was asked to lead the sort of first major World Bank, you know, blockbuster report on what is the relationship between the natural world and economic development. 
 7:30: And so,, really exciting and huge, huge arguments. 
 7:36: On the one side, the economists said this is, wow, we don't really get this at all. 
 7:43: The other side, the environmentalists were saying, why are you still using economic terminology? 
 7:49: Well, well, we actually do live in a real economic world and so we have to do that. 
 7:54: And so trying to navigate through and, and losing friends on both sides was, again, one of those exciting stages in one's career. 
 8:04: And I'm sure you've done that too, Wolfgang. 
 8:07: Wow, thank you for giving it that perspective. 
 8:10: I know you well, but I've never heard it in that way. 
 8:13: Basically, this was the first time I heard it. 
 8:15: So clearly, this movement from having being a niche subject to a mainstream and then losing friends on both sides, but I guess winning other friends that are intellectually curious like you are. 
 8:25: Would you say that that was some of the time in the 90s that then environmental, environmental science became mainstream, not just using your example of the Indonesian minister, but also that it moved from activism to more serious science? 
 8:38: Yeah, I think that's, that's exactly, that's exactly right. 
 8:41: And, and that's where the kind of thing that you spend your time on is so, is so important. 
 8:47: you know, an institution like the World Bank or even ministries of finance and planning around the world, they're pretty technocratic. 
 8:54: they like to be evidence-based and you need evidence. 
 8:58: and so they had reams of data on. 
 9:01: Of financial risks, and interest rates and trade and all that kind of thing. 
 9:07: and they had very little to really grist for their thinking about the natural world. 
 9:12: And, and so the, the development of data. 
 9:15: , during the 1990s and since then has been absolutely trans trans transformative. 
 9:23: And what's really fascinating now is if you go to, as, as I spend half my time at the London School of Economics now, you go to a place like that or Georgetown, you find that,, the number of students who want to do PhDs on the link between environment and economic development is huge. 
 9:44: and, and it's interesting. 
 9:45: I, in Georgetown, I am the, I'm in the School of Foreign Service, which is rated number one in the world for foreign service. 
 9:53: They have a major program now where almost all their students, you know, are part of this on science, environment, data. 
 10:03: And these are, these are people who are going to be diplomats, they're gonna be foreign, they're gonna be leaders of corporations, but they realize that in today's world, if you want to be a diplomat, or if you want to be a CEO of a, a serious company, you had better understand. 
 10:19: Sort of some of these major global environmental issues because that is going to drive so much the debate. 
 10:25: So it's a, it's a very exciting time. 
 10:29: Brilliant how you put it, Andrew, and as we transition to today and tomorrow, which you just outlined, what I still remember when you moved to WRI which was one of the innovations on tracking forest fires in real-time. 
 10:41: Tell us a bit about some of the, the latest what you could call bigger, bigger data innovations that you know of, you have been associated with, but you also what you think that really moved the needle. 
 10:52: Well, if you take a subject like climate change, of course, you could go all the way back. 
 10:56: The idea of climate change was, was discovered in the 1820s. 
 11:02: Guys like John Tyndall and so on, and then a very famous Scandinavian scientist called Arrhenius, he actually figured out how much the world will grow. 
 11:11: They had, they had no data out in the real world. 
 11:13: This was all in a laboratory and it was basically theory. 
 11:17: And, and since then, and obviously in the 90s and in the last sort of quarter century, we've now been able to, do, what we never could do before. 
 11:28: It was only in 1956 that, I think 1956, but in the 1950s, that for the first time, we started measuring, carbon dioxide intensity in the atmosphere. 
 11:42: and, and that those measures. 
 11:43: Measurements on the top of, the volcano in Hawaii, Mauna Loa, still going on today, interestingly, and that's when we have the so-called Keeling curve, who a guy called Keeling that actually started that, and they were the first time we measured. 
 11:58: , now, since then, we've, we're able to do amazing things. 
 12:02: I mean, we now know that, sort of 30% of all, climate change is caused by agriculture and land use change. 
 12:12: We now thanks to satellites can see virtually, virtually almost every tree in the world falling. 
 12:19: And now thanks to AI we can see, trees actually growing and we actually now can figure out. 
 12:25: How much carbon is embedded in those trees. 
 12:28: And we're now in a situation in which from space with continuous, learning, and, and, and ground truthing, we're now able to, figure out, in considerable detail what the net, emissions are, how much carbon is leaving Earth because of land use change, how much carbon. 
 12:52: it's being sucked back to Earth, and we're able to for every hectare on the planet, make those calculations from space. 
 12:59: I mean, unthinkable. 
 13:00: And what we're now able to do, and you've been part of this yourself, Wolfgang, what we're now able to do is, is thanks to AI we're able to put dozens of, of data sets almost on top of each other. 
 13:13: And we're able to now say, OK, so we're losing how much forest in Bolivia? 
 13:18: , and could you tell us exactly where it is? 
 13:21: And could you tell us the extent to which that is due to, different types of crops? 
 13:26: To what extent is it due to, investment in infrastructure and roads, and we're able to ask questions that it would take forever, if possible at all, if the humans had to do it on their own. 
 13:39: And so we're now, for example, just literally in the last 4 years, we're now able to measure methane. 
 13:47: , emissions, from space. 
 13:51: and, and before we always knew that methane, methane is actually one of the, one of the greenhouse gasses you can actually measure directly from emissions. 
 13:58: Carbon dioxide, you really can't. 
 13:59: It's really very hard to do, but methane you can. 
 14:02: , but now what we can do is down to, you know, 100 m from space, we can say this is how much methane from this gas pipeline is leaking or from this rice paddy or this agricultural livestock, you know, factory sort of thing. 
 14:19: So, so, so we're in a very different situation now, and, and it's, and it's a, it's a very exciting stage that we're at. 
 14:27: Well, but it's, it's fantastic, Andrew, to hear this word exciting in a time when there's challenges also, and it is, I, I agree it is very exciting in many ways, especially what's possible. 
 14:39: I wanna move to this data and into action, into policy. 
 14:42: How would you still assess the world situation in terms of people having this data available now, individuals, companies, governments, and how much action is being taken on climate. 
 14:56: Well, one of the things that, that you obviously think a lot about the World Data Lab is, is that whilst data is absolutely and utterly essential for good decision-making, the data on its own won't do it. 
 15:10: It's how it's communicated. 
 15:12: , and that's obviously what you're in the business of and you're, you're in the business of finding leaders and institutions that actually want data and can use the data and then you presumably curate the data to make it ultimately useful. 
 15:28: we've, we've learned now for some time, that data on its own is good and essential, but not enough. 
 15:35: In fact, you're on a different subject. 
 15:36: You'll remember that when, when, you and I both lived in, in Indonesia. 
 15:41: You'll remember at the end of the Suharto regime, everyone knew there was a lot of corruption, but it was never, there was never any data on it. 
 15:48: And suddenly the revolution took place and we had all of this information on the front page of the newspaper. 
 15:55: This guy did this, this, this, you know, dark crony capitalists did this, and we assumed. 
 16:00: Therefore, my goodness, it will, it will clear up. 
 16:03: It's amazing. 
 16:04: I mean, within a few months we became numb to it and that's not what it took. 
 16:09: It then took a lot of work to set up an anti-corruption commission. 
 16:12: You need the infrastructure that will actually, actually do something. 
 16:16: You need legal reforms and so on. 
 16:18: So that's exactly true. 
 16:19: In, in, in climate data now is that, I mean, we have, amazing leadership in some companies. 
 16:27: I mean, maybe a third of all major companies really want to do the right thing. 
 16:31: They are using data to, to advance. 
 16:34: China is saying, hey, actually, for us, it's, it's gonna be great for our future economy. 
 16:40: So they're using data to invest massively. 
 16:43: In renewable and green technologies because they see it's in their, their interests. 
 16:47: Countries like India are saying, actually, you're dead right, we're going to do the same. 
 16:51: We want to be part of that. 
 16:52: But of course, obviously, and I'm speaking to you from Washington DC, and the government in this country doesn't take the, the data seriously. 
 17:01: So we need to look for, for, for those that will take the data seriously and we to not give up. 
 17:07: We need to continually try and identify, so what exactly is the issue that would turn middle America to recognize that it is crazy to ignore climate and nature loss. 
 17:20: I mean, this is hurting their grandchildren, their children and themselves today. 
 17:26: And so we need to continually sort of look. 
 17:30: For that, those entry points. 
 17:34: Then, and let me add a bit different angle also, Andrew, and get your perspective on that, which is also what, where do you think we stand with the effort to mitigate climate change because, as you know, we were last time we met, we launched the world emissions clock in Washington DC with the World Bank chief economist, you were there, to help us launch that, at that time. 
 17:53: And we just did our latest projections and guess what, this year actually emissions won't go up much. 
 17:58: It may be about stable. 
 17:59: They're very high, 60 gigatons, that includes the methane, but there's been a lot of progress, including actually in the US, interestingly, and isn't it sometimes also that we, you know, we should be alarmists, but we should be alarmists in a certain measured way to say some things go right, some things go wrong. 
 18:15: It's not all, we're not at the end of the world currently, and I sense that sometimes the activists didn't, don't look either at the data as carefully as they should. 
 18:23: Well, I, I, I think you're right. 
 18:24: We have to live between, we have to juggle, you know, hope and despair. 
 18:30: you, you know, you, you, you, you, you go to a major climate meeting with real experts and you get 100 of them and you say, OK, how do you feel? 
 18:36: And half of them will say, it's unbelievable how well we're doing. 
 18:40: Did you know that when Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1978, Since then, the price of those same solar panels have fallen by 99.7%. It's amazing. 
 18:57: And the same thing's happening with battery technology, EVs, and so on. 
 19:00: It's incredible. 
 19:01: And then you get the other half and they'll say, we're a bunch of lemmings, we're jumping off a cliff, you know, they can't both be right, but actually they are both right because the, the arc of history is absolutely, indisputably heading towards a low carbon economy,, and so there's no question about that. 
 19:22: The question is, will it happen quickly enough? 
 19:24: And you're absolutely right. 
 19:25: We're now stabilizing greenhouse gasses. 
 19:28: But what we've got to remember is that climate change is a stock problem, not a flow problem. 
 19:33: So, so, so, so every year those 60 gigatons are pushing out more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. 
 19:41: So we need to be down to that's why net zero is so important. 
 19:44: And so we're already at the stage where we're at 1.5 degrees, so we need very quickly, and the way the, the, the sort of oversimplistic way to look at this is that, you know, if you've got the 19, the 2020s, 2030s, 2040s, each year, each of those decades, we need to halve, we need to halve the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. 
 20:05: And if you do, if you do half times half times half, you'll still have like 12.5% of greenhouse gas emissions left going up into the sky in the year 2050. 
 20:16: and those need to be offset by what we call net reductions, taking greenhouse gasses out of the, out of the atmosphere. 
 20:23: Now, obviously, we're way off track on this. 
 20:25: So you, you say we should be pleased because we've leveled. 
 20:28: Well, no, we're supposed to halve this. 
 20:31: And the good news is that there are European countries that are actually Doing great. 
 20:36: I mean, the United Kingdom is now has a target and it's on track to do it, to lower greenhouse gasses by total greenhouse gasses by 81% between 1990 and 2035. 
 20:49: The EU has come out with something 65 to 71%. 
 20:53: I mean, these are, these are incredible demonstrations and it's not, it's not actually hurting their economic growth. 
 20:59: So you're dead right. 
 21:00: There's, there's reasons to be very optimistic, but obviously the headwinds of the moment are very much against it. 
 21:09: And one of the interesting things, as you say, is that, you know, you can, you can be a president of the United States and try and promote coal, but it's important to remember that, you know, elections in the United States, they change lots of things, but they actually don't change the laws of physics. 
 21:26: And they actually don't change the laws of economics. 
 21:28: And it turns out that today, if you want to generate electricity, the cheapest way in 85% of the world's land mass is renewable energy. 
 21:38: So there was this wonderful example of the, there's a, there's a, there's a, a coal museum, National Coal Museum in Kentucky. 
 21:46: And during the first Trump administration, they put solar panels on their roof, this wonderful illustration. 
 21:54: Even the coal miners are using so why? 
 21:57: Because it makes sense. 
 21:59: And, and, and we need to get that data out, Wolfgang, exactly along the lines that that you're doing, and you should take a lot of credit, I think, for what you're doing. 
 22:07: No thanks I'm fully right that, you know, stabilization is not enough, but it's better than most people think, by the way, and it's not stable across all countries, right? 
 22:16: And for good reasons, I think maybe Africa should emit more if you want to be provocative because development is also important. 
 22:22: It doesn't matter if Rwanda emits one or two. 
 22:25: You know, 2 gig 2 tons per capita. 
 22:28: but then, just walk us through because we're obviously at this trajectory now that we know we, we don't want to live in a world of 4 degrees. 
 22:35: We will probably not live in a world of 1.5 because that we're already breaching now. 
 22:39: Give the, the listeners a sense of where this could end up and how would a world where we have +2 degrees, plus 2.2, what do we need to get ready for? 
 22:48: Because I know it's not as pleasant as it is now, but. 
 22:52: We'll still probably manage, I guess, with + 2.2 degrees, right? 
 22:56: Well, I think anybody that watches the news or looks at the data knows that extreme weather is becoming more of a problem. 
 23:03: There's no question about it, and it's obviously affecting. 
 23:05: Low-income areas more than it's affecting rich areas. 
 23:08: But I mean, so, so we're on a track, unfortunately, that year after year, things are going to get less pleasant for us. 
 23:16: now, if you live in Minnesota, you know, it's not so bad because it's, it's a little warmer than it was, but, but, but, but generally speaking, You know, things are, things are getting worse. 
 23:28: What will happen in terms of progress? 
 23:30: Obviously, it's, it's unknowable. 
 23:32: In terms of generating electricity. 
 23:35: And remember, if you want to address climate change, you not only have to, generate electricity from renewable resources, but you need to electrify your economy. 
 23:46: So you need to move away from fossil fuel-based automobiles and transportation towards electric or hydrogen-based. 
 23:55: Now, there's still a lot of investment that needs to take place. 
 23:59: There's a whole range of economic activities called the so-called hard to abate. 
 24:03: That's things like steel, cement. 
 24:06: Airline travel, ocean shipping that actually needs so much energy that actually it's difficult to use electricity for that. 
 24:15: So that's where sort of hydrogen, ammonia from green hydrogen can play a role. 
 24:22: There's all to play for in that, very, very exciting opportunities. 
 24:26: Battery storage is the great new story that's out there because, you know, Everyone still likes to say, well, the wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine at night. 
 24:37: Well, actually, even short term, battery storage can make a huge difference. 
 24:43: You know, there's this wonderful program that the World Bank and the African Bank are leading at the moment with the world, with the Global Energy Alliance called Mission 300 bring electricity to 300 million Africans by the year 2030. 
 24:57: Will that be renewable or will it be fossil-based? 
 25:00: Well, if you can now have short-term battery storage, which is perfectly affordable, yes, the sun goes down at 6 o'clock, but you only need 4 hours more, electricity that comes from the storage during the day to enable you to have an evening where your kids can do their homework, you can do reading. 
 25:18: If you're a store or restaurant, you can do it. 
 25:20: And so there are, there are unbelievable. 
 25:23: blessings that are coming from technology right now, but there's all still to play for. 
 25:28: I mean, it's a, it's a colossal challenge. 
 25:30: And on the 30% which comes from land use change, we obviously are still losing forests at a, at a truly alarming rate, and we're losing nature at a, at a, at a rate which is totally and utterly, unacceptable and it's going to undermine the very development that people like yourself and myself. 
 25:50: that have spent several decades working on it, you know, are, are so honored to have been part of this progress that could all be threatened and undermined. 
 25:58: Yeah. 
 25:58: Well, so nicely put, Andrew, and I, I want to come to the end on your recent appointment in the Royal Botanical Gardens and also how you outlined, you know, the frontiers and measurement. 
 26:08: and by the way, if you want to get the, view of the whole history of the environment and development, Andrea, I think recently did this amazing. 
 26:15: , almost synial talk, I think it was in, on, on July 4th, right? 
 26:19: Didn't you do that in Philadelphia? 
 26:22: yeah, that please watch that and I'll put it in the link when we, when we launch this podcast. 
 26:27: But, coming back to your, you know, describing the frontiers of data science and an environment, talk about us of your new appointment and also what are the areas you still expect, you know, where there's still a lot of unknowns, like in the oceans and beyond, what do you think is the next frontier of understanding the environment better? 
 26:45: Well, there still are lots of unknowns, no question about that. 
 26:48: And you're, you're dead right. 
 26:49: In, in, in nature, there's still a huge amount. 
 26:53: You think about it, we, we, we think there are about 8 to 10 million species in the world, could be up to 40 million, but sort of 8 to 10. 
 27:03: So far, we've only identified 1.8 million of those. 
 27:07: So there are all these species which we are losing at the moment before we've even discovered that they exist. 
 27:14: and, and, you know, this is a terrible shame. 
 27:16: Now, the, the, the, the, the reason it takes so long to identify new species is because it's extremely complicated. 
 27:24: What you can now do with AI, you can using sight, sound, and DNA, you can, get AI to sort things through incredibly. 
 27:35: , quickly, and we will, we will start seeing more species being identified and that in turn will help us to, to, to make progress on real policy issues too. 
 27:48: And your point about underwater is really important because, you know, down there in the depths, there are, there are millions of species. 
 27:57: Species that have not been identified. 
 27:59: What we can now do, we can put sensors down there that, that analyze something called eDNA, and eDNA is all you have to do is test the water, and these species live, leave traces of their DNA in the water. 
 28:16: You can then analyze that. 
 28:18: And thanks to AI you can sort through all of the many different types of species. 
 28:24: Where does this fit? 
 28:25: Is it new? 
 28:26: How, how different is it from the others can sort that out. 
 28:29: So, so it's a very, very exciting time. 
 28:32: And one of the reasons, one of the Many reasons I'm really thrilled to be working with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, which is the number one botanical research institute in the world, is that they don't only look at plants, but they look at fungi. 
 28:47: And you might think, well, what's that's, who cares about fungi? 
 28:51: Well, we wouldn't be eating, we wouldn't be living without fungi, and, and agriculture wouldn't exist without fungi. 
 28:58: And what goes on under the ground is a total mystery. 
 29:01: , and so far we've only identified 5% of all the fungi species which exist. 
 29:07: And yet it is fungi that does transactions with the roots of plants and where it takes, it takes, for example, carbon and, and gives, gives other nutrients. 
 29:18: To the plant. 
 29:20: it's a, it's a great mystery. 
 29:22: You know, they sometimes say that we know more about the dark side of Mars than we know about what happens 1 m beneath your feet. 
 29:30: So, so, so this is a, this is a sort of thrilling area. 
 29:35: Andrew, thank you so much for this incredible tour de force. 
 29:37: Obviously, I know you well, but this was something new to me to get this so compact, so inspiring. 
 29:44: We end this podcast always with something, I hope you're not surprised now, by your favorite number. 
 29:50: So tell us your favorite number and the story behind that number. 
 29:56: Well, let's see. 
 29:59: I'm not sure it's a favorite number in the sense of being a good number, but an interesting number. 
 30:03: Maybe that's what, that's what we're looking for. 
 30:07: so, so. 
 30:08: There are 65,000 species of vertebrates that exist in the world. 
 30:15: One of those species has doubled in population in the last 50 years. 
 30:21: Guess which one that is? 
 30:22: Humans. 
 30:23: 5000 species that, again, what, what is their characterization? 
 30:29: That vertebrate, vertebrates, so animals that have backbones. 
 30:33: So there are 65,000 vertebrates, species of vertebrates. 
 30:38: We're one of them. 
 30:39: One of those species, i.e., us, has doubled in population in 50 years. 
 30:44: If you take all of the other 64,999 and you estimate the populations of all of those together, they have declined by over 50%. 
 30:56: So think about that. 
 30:57: We've doubled. 
 30:58: All the other vertebrates have fallen by more than 50%. 
 31:02: Is this the sort of civilization we want? 
 31:05: And a related data is this If you took all of the land-based mammals in the world and you weighed them all together, and you go back to 10,000 years ago, which is when we invented agriculture, And you looked at the ratio of wild mammals to cultivated mammals and human mammals, 99% would be wild animals. 
 31:30: Do you know what the percentage today of all the wild mammals compared to all of the, these land-based animals compared to the cultivated ones, i.e., livestock and ourselves, 3%. 
 31:46: 3% of the total mass of land-based mammals are wild. 
 31:51: 3% of the total weight. 
 31:54: humans account for like 30%. 
 31:57: And, and livestock animals which we cultivate ourselves are about 65%. 
 32:04: So we've, we've just, we've, we've changed the world in a way that has benefited us, which is good, but if we don't keep our eye on what we are doing to nature, we are going to undermine, the progress for our, our progeny in the, in the generations to come. 
 32:24: Sir Andrew Steer, thank you. 
 32:26: Very inspiring, lucky students who will be taught by Andrew Steer in Georgetown and LSE, and I hope some of our kids and grandkids will go to these universities. 
 32:36: Thank you so much, Andrew. 
 32:37: Thanks, Wolf. 
 32:38: It's a pleasure.