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The planet’s losing.
We’re in a hole. Climate, nature and social inequality crises. Story with a swerve gets us out. It’s the shape of all our lives. Up-down, down-up. And this shape of slantwise story, it creates hope and agency.
In this podcast, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers. They share their ideas on how we get out of holes. Good story is not just a hiding place. It’s a finding place.
The podcast vibe is the warm-dark daguerreotype photograph, invented at the start of the industrialised era, before human-induced carbon pollution of the atmosphere.
My guests are writers and poets, artists and scientists, environmental and business leaders, farmers and landowners, local and national activists, festival directors, therapists, religious leaders. All are storytellers too.
The music clips at the start and end of episodes were recorded at public dances in Punakha and Thimphu (Bhutan).
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027. It is called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."
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24 Yadvinder Malhi on how ideas of vibrancy and ecological civilisation link nature recovery in the Amazon and the UK
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We’re on location in Yadvinder Malhi’s office in Oxford, professor and director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. Yadvinder’s work-origin story begins when he first climbs sampling towers in the Amazon to look out on 1000 miles of rainforest in every direction. “I was absolutely bewitched. I felt it viscerally.” We talk about culture and nature, the wild force of nature, and the sense of living in a belly of something huge. He recalls being sent back to India aged six to reconnect, and see the value of the huge family network as another support system. “Vibrancy is more than abundance,” says Yadvinder. It is energy to be shared. Vibrancy is about connections and story.
We talk of ecological civilisation in China, and nature recovery in the UK. He says, “We need to be thinking about radical transformations of landscapes,” not just the utilitarian values of nature.
He also says, “Ecology and ecosystems are the constant negotiation of relationships.”
Yadvinder’s new book will be called “Vibrant Earth.”
His heroes and heroines are the small organisation and local people making positive change: the social underbelly beneath nations and governments.
His book recommendation: David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous.
His key action: don’t stop at connections to nature: turn to action.
Website: https://www.yadvindermalhi.org/
Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery: https://naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/
Oxford Nature Network: https://www.youtube.com/@oxfordnaturenetwork
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."
Yes, that's wonderful to be here with you. Lovely, and thank you for hosting us here at the Environmental Change Institute and the Leverhume Centre for Nature Recovery, which is what you direct. So we're going to talk a bit about nature recovery and the climate challenges, of course, in your perspectives and what you've seen over time. So do you want to kind of just jump straight in and talk us a little bit about the big picture when it comes to nature recovery? I mean, what what what sorts of uh uh challenges do we face? What does it look like at this point of uh of the world in the middle of a you know series of severe heat waves across Europe and the wheels coming off climate, um which is uh something we've seen coming. But yes. Nature recovery.
SPEAKER_01Well I think it's it's it certainly is a pivotal time to think about nature recovery. And what has slightly defined our motivation for creating the Centre for Nature Recovery was the fact that there are all of these big policy moves, the global biodiversity uh framework, the convention on biological diversity, calling for essentially the narrative is often called bending the curve of biodiversity to go from endless decline to a future where biodiversity is recovering. And that was translating through to national governments, EU, county councils, city councils. So there is this narrative about needing to recover nature. But firstly, we had no idea how to do this. Uh there's very few examples of nature recovery at scale. So, how do we actually do this beyond beyond declarations? And then, but that also opened up questions of uh what do we mean by that? What is nature recovery? Is it going to some past state? How do we make sense of that in a world of the changing climate and all of these factors? So I think the big picture of nature recovery is that uh the need to do it, the increasing recognition that beyond climate, there's a deeper civilizational challenge around the biosphere that underpins all of us. We emerge from the biosphere, we are creatures of the biosphere. Uh, and how do we maintain and restore the biosphere? Uh, but also how do we do it in the context of a world that's that's changed and uh and is continuing to change? So there's no going back to some early agricultural, pre-agricultural past. Uh and what do we mean by nature in those contexts? So they're the sorts of challenges that I see, at least, are the are the important ones to address. And how can our institutions and structures then rise to that challenge? So it's far more than an ecological question, it's a social and governance and ethical and values question, all those things thrown intogether.
SPEAKER_00All interconnected. Yeah, all interconnected in various ways. So that idea of what the future looks like is that it's better than it is at the moment, but we're not quite sure what how better will be translated in different places. Or do we have an idea, a clearer idea of the of the principles behind nature recovery which we would need to get in place?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think it I would say it has potential to be better rather than it being inevitably better. And the reason why I feel it has potential is that I think some of the macro pressures that have been really constricting nature have the potential to stabilize or start receding this century. And examples for that are climate change, even though we're seeing increasing climate change. I still live in hope though we will come to our senses enough as a globally to stabilize emissions by the middle of the century and then possibly start having a drawdown uh process. Uh and similarly, I think uh we know human population is set to peak, and just to intrude in demographic process trends overall is almost certain to decline over time. Uh even per capita consumption, which is the the real uh devil in the detail, does seem to be for newly developing countries, doesn't seem to be following the same high consumption pathways that the countries have followed past. So I think these macro pressures are beginning to recede, the tide of these pressures are receding. And our option now is do as this tide recedes, do we have a nature that we can rebuild that's fit for purpose and functional and rich and full of its biological heritage? Or do we have some degraded shadow of what a vibrant natural world could be? And that's a challenge that I think we face in trying to try to pull together.
SPEAKER_00So a lot of your work has been with a focus on Amazonia. And I think a lot of people, when they think of a biodiversity-rich and nature-rich place in the world, if we mention the Amazon as a whole, then I think a lot of people would think, oh yes, I think that's it. Yes, you know, even if they don't know very much about it, it's got an iconic image to it. I mean, could you say a little bit about uh the Amazon? Of course, the the COP, the conference of the parties in 2025 was in Manaus, um, in Amazon. In Belem Belemme, yes. In Belem, sorry, yes, of course. Um and um and you were there. So could you say a bit about how this looks when we when we pick on one or two of the really iconic biodiversity rich places in the world that are also culturally rich, as well we know.
SPEAKER_01Uh well first of all, I'll admit that uh the Amazon plays a major part in my my career development. Uh and so uh uh there's a bit of my origin story there, I think, as well. Uh, which is that uh I grew up in the UK uh in Essex. Uh we can get come back to that later. Uh uh and uh uh my undergraduate training was in physics, and I got interested in climate change uh then in the late 1980s, and it was just emerging as an issue. So I did a PhD in climate science and meteorology and climate science. Uh and then uh as a postdoc was sent to the Amazon very much as an atmospheric physicist. Uh my job was to build towers and measure the fluxes of carbon dioxide into the Amazon. And the idea then was these the this technology was new and there was interest in understanding was the Amazon absorbing a fraction of our cost of fossil fuel emissions, and could that show demonstrate the value of this rainforest in terms of its climate benefits? But we but we we thought that because the imbalance in the global carbon cycle, it was likely, but no one had measured it. So these were the attempts, the first attempts to go out and measure it. And I moved Bentum and House, uh uh spent several months waiting for my luggage to clear customs and equipment, and was absolutely bewitched by the Amazon, not just the science of the Amazon, but the Amazon itself. And standing on that tower and seeing a thousand miles of rainforest in every direction, and just no one knowing that there was a thousand miles of rainforest in every direction, and there was so much to learn, so little understood. And I think uh to me that was the gateway to the biosphere as well. The Amazon itself isn't it amongst the most magnificent things in our biosphere, but also the sense, firstly, that we live in something vast and living, which is true everywhere, it's true here in Oxford as is true in Manaus, uh, uh, and that this is ancient, far more ancient than us. Uh, something we can know intellectually in anywhere. We've been as you read your bio evolution and your evolution history and everything, but to feel it viscerally is something I had the privilege of feeling when I was there in the Amazon that actually I was just a small being in a vast green planet, and that changed my entire career path. I got fascinated by ecology, got fascinated by global biosphere science, uh, and uh uh and I think uh so firstly uh the Amazon's played a huge role in in shaping that and I th and I and I think it is important to think of these vast uh I'd say natural reasons, but by natural I don't mean places without people. Humans have inhabited and shaped the Amazon for 10,000 years, and indigenous communities of various sorts have moulded the species composition, the animal composition there. So we shouldn't think of these places as as exotic wildernesses uh uh without people. There are they are human-shaped, human-modified.
SPEAKER_00So culture and nature is progress side by side, intertwining intertwine.
SPEAKER_01Very intertwined. But having said that, we shouldn't overstate that. This isn't some sort of garden landscape. This is something where the vile, wild forces of the natural world and more the human world, are very much in dominance uh and and uh and apparent there. Uh and so it's important to protect those. And uh the Amazon is both a source of concern and hope. Uh it does contribute the largest fraction of global deforestation even now, even though Brazil's made huge progress in slowing down rates of deforestation from their peak, and a lot of credit to Brazil for pushing that forward. Uh yeah uh but just because of its sheer scale uh has a big role to play, uh, and it's got this high biodiversity. And there is and there's also this interesting nexus of land use change, global climate change, fire, all of these things playing together in this critical system uh overall. If you ask me, overall I still remain relatively optimistic about the future of the Amazon. I think it's a place where there are issues for sure, but there's enough left and there's enough governance there and a strong civil society and all these factors that suggest that it won't be destroyed without people really fighting for it, really being aware of what's going on there. And that gives me hope that it'll be uh and it needs to be an awful important part of uh of our earth system. You can't just lose the Amazon and say, Oh, we'll cope one way or another. Yes, yeah, we'll replace it in some other way. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So go back to that moment of standing on top of top of the tower. It's it's how high? It's kind of 20 metres, 30 meters.
SPEAKER_01So the canopy the forest canopy is about 30 metres high, and then the tower is about 50 or 60 metres high. Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00So you've climbed up to the top, and then you're looking out at uh trees of different heights, some very tall and some sort. Animal noise, insect noise, yes, it's a vastness of the.
SPEAKER_01This is still a scene that sometimes I close my eyes and I can still like dream of it and uh and visualize it. So you firstly, one thing you notice that the tree canopy, there are different heights, but the most the different textures of the trees is one thing you already notice. So and that's because the species diversity is so high. It's really hard to spot two trees that look the same because there's such high diversity. So this endless kaleidoscope of types of trees and leaves and flowers uh uh at different times. And then you hear the sounds, the howler monkeys, the different birds at sunrise. Some nights I I slept in a hammock on on the tower, and you would just be woken up by this this dawn chorus of uh of uh of noises. And then, especially in the morning or after a rain event, the mist as it rises through the canopy and comes up as is these layers that gives a texture to the canopy and a depth to it, and you just get this layer upon layer uh of sense of mystery to the place, which we know which it just mirrors the actual true mystery of the richness of that of places like that.
SPEAKER_00Wonderfully put I once climbed the Temple of the Giant Jaguar at Tical in Guatemala. Yes. Um and uh a similar kind of experience. We were at oh you can't climb it now, but at the top up a steep um vertical ladder to get to the very top, and a great storm came charging in across, and it was just being um transformed and translated into uh uh a place of enormous energy and um uh something beyond us. Yes. Something really big and uh touching. But it strikes me that the way if you could bottle the way that you just described that experience, yes, yeah, I think that that would that would be a way to get people to take nature more seriously, perhaps, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_01I'd say this sense that we live in the belly of something huge, whatever we decide to call it or label it, that that that of humanity collectively or individually are just part of something much bigger and much more ancient rather than being the top of some pyramid the way that we imagine it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, take us back a little bit then to um uh links to India. So, as you said, you grew up in in South End, in South Essex. Oh, you didn't say that, but I knew that.
SPEAKER_01Um and um your parents had moved here in the 60s, so they were from Punjab in North India, which is the very agricultural region uh in the Indus Valley that uh links onto borders onto Pakistan.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, and you'd you'd been growing up here for a while, and then they sent you off on a sort of boot camp experience to to reconnect with culture in India or so.
SPEAKER_01A couple of times. So the first time was when I was six, and initially my mum came out with me, and then after a few weeks she left me. And I remember being quite traumatized by that. Uh uh I'd on the negative side, there was a huge culture shock from relatively comfortable existence in in suburban Essex to being in a village that at that time had very unreliable electricity, no sanitation, and everything was done in the fields uh outside. So it was a very basic raw existence, but at the same time being surrounded by the love of this extended family that I didn't know, you know, 20 cousins and others that that just absorbed me and uh just had a natural kinship and just a natural love, even though I hadn't met before. I remember being sort of embraced in the bosom of my cousins and my aunts and uncles in a lovely way. And uh I don't uh and certainly I think uh uh it affected me in loads of ways. I think one of my motivation for my parents to do this was to give me a sense of India and uh where where I belonged. In Essex at that time there were very few ethnic minorities, and I was uh I've I was one of two or three uh ethnic minority kids in my school year.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_01Uh uh and so the the and I think that helped me a lot through my teenage years and having this sense of a wider identity uh uh uh at the times when you can feel quite insecure about about identity. Uh I think it actually means other ways in retrospect. I think uh uh it got me very easy and comfortable with insects and heat and being bitten to death by mosquitoes and all those things, and I think that certainly it became part of my tropical armory that would that would help me be very comfortable in in rainforests uh uh late later on in my career. And I do, even though my aunt my my aunt my undergraduate education leaned more towards physics, I I do remember at that time I was fascinated by natural history, and my cousins would end up going and catching every element of natural history they could find. So they'd bring a parrot or they'd bring a snake and things, and uh and then we'd have it in the courtyard, and we'd look at it for a while, and then they'd put it back back in the field. And so I became a little bit of a doctor-do little sort of character with my cousins or the this the strange person that wanted to see all the animals, and then they would capture all the animals for me. Bring them in there.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. Um well it strikes me the way you described the the wider family there, that that kind of kinship of connections is a bit like being in the rainforest. It's a similar sensation that here we are connected to all of these things that that have their own kind of life histories and life courses, but but if we feel connected to them, then there's something kind of quite nice about all of that. That gives us a perspective on the world that I think is kind of quite helpful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Um I think uh yeah, uh I think it feeds in some ways to a vision of what ecology and ecosystems are to me, which is the which is that it's a constant negotiation of relationships. Uh so one thing ecology has very much pushed away from in recent decades is the idea of harmony and balance of nature and equilibrium, that there's some sort of perfect Eden-like state of nature that's from which it has fallen because of human activity or whatever. And actually, more it's just constant, ever-foaming sets of relationships that are creating and recreating under different conditions. It's a much more dynamic vision.
SPEAKER_00Dynamic and almost a performance, performative thing. The emergent challenges and new states will arise from the thing itself as as time progresses. So presumably we can nudge things in this direction or that direction if we want, if we have intent and we wish to do something. Um you came up with this idea of of a web of energy or TED Talk. Um, how do we measure the planet's heartbeat? Yes, which I thought was a kind of lovely idea. Is that kind of connected to this notion of the of ecology being um uh evolving, emerging relationships? Yes, sir. Is that part of what you're getting at there?
SPEAKER_01I think so. This is something where my thinking has developed in the last few years. Uh first I certainly didn't come up with Pebble of Energy, it's been a foundational idea in ecology since the 1940s. Yeah. Uh but I think it has died a little bit as a research field. Uh and uh we've certainly played a my group has played a significant role in trying to revive it in terms of its practical application in terms of thinking of thinking of conservation and nature recovery. Uh but also beyond that, I think as an intuitive way of thinking about nature, you know, we uh uh uh we know we get a we get an intuitive sense of the energy of a system, the uh how it makes it us feel. It's very metaphorical in that sense, but I think it captures something real about the natural world as well. And so what some of our work using energy flow is to try and link this this very empirical science to uh an emotional connection to nature. And uh and so I I often in my writings recently I've talked about vibrancy uh as a as a as a metaphor but also as a scientific concept in nature, which is not just about how much energy is flowing through, but how it's spread and through the web across an ecosystem. For something to be vibrant, it is it isn't enough that there's loads of energy. The energy's got to be shared through through a system as well. So a monoculture crop being eaten by a pest is not vibrant, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, but a rich ecosystem where it's cascading and uh creating all of these other interactions is something that that's very so a crop with legumes in the middle and trap crops around the outside and trees in the in the landscape and a whole range. Is it that by definition is already going to be more vibrant? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the nice thing about that is that you're looking at the system as it is rather than with reference to some sort of oh, well, if this was a forest, it would be like this. Yeah. So and I think it's helpful in terms of conservation and things. So rather than saying, well, a city or or a or an agricultural system is always going to be fallen in some way because it's never a native ecosystem. It's never the perfect one. Uh actually, there's a lot going on here, and if we quantify it, we can actually see a lot of ecology and also new ecology, new relationships, and maybe sometimes with non-native species uh or invasive species as well, uh, often doing active ecological things uh overall. So it gives a I think it opens up a much more creative view of what ecosystems are and what ecosystems can do.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. There's quite a lot of uh discussion about a concept of abundance as as a as a kind of counterpoint to scarcity that modern economics, modern economic systems are founded upon scarcity. Economics likes things to be scarce because that forces the value up.
SPEAKER_01Right, yes.
SPEAKER_00Um they also like to restrict your access to things um because that also forces the value up and you want things more. Consumption patterns are driven by ideas of scarcity. So there's quite a lot of talk about abundance, but it strikes me that that hasn't got the valency of vibrancy because abundance you you can have more of things, but you haven't said you haven't said what uh how that's actually going to play out. You can't have more of everything.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and also captures vibrancy captures the idea of share of that more as well, whether ecologically or actually even social systems as well. Yeah, something a system where the abundance is is captured by a few billionaires is is different from a system where it's shared throughout society.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, exactly. Um, and as you said, uh this gets us away from on the one hand seeing a uh a very successful monoculture crop, a field of wheat or a field of maize or only of rice. That's very good on food production, but it's not very good when it comes to wider biodiversity nature patterns. Um and we can say that because we know that there are other models. Yes. I mean if we if that was the only model to produce food, we would have to just go with it. Yes. And perhaps that's what's happened over a period of decades in the last century. But we do know that there are other ways of doing it in almost every place in the world. Yes, yes. So the question is how you get from A to B. Um and that maybe it's helpful to say, well, we can do this with food production and with nature. Yes. Or as you said, you can be thinking of the vibrancy of of ecological systems within cities.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Parks, gardens, small spaces. Um that also starts to you don't say, oh, this is always going to be a kind of, as you say, a fallen system. Yes, it's always going to be weak, because it's not like the Amazon. No, of course it's not. But it could do something quite amazing if we think about it in a different way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And one thing that's emerged from some of our recent work applying these measures of vibrancy is how much many human modified systems, uh, whether it's uh uh rotational farming, agroforestry, uh uh even just logging to uh forests to some extent can maintain or enhance vibrancy. You actually have more energy flow in those in the in those systems. Right. And uh we had a paper recently a few years ago in Nature where we showed that logged forests had higher energy flows and spreading uh lots of species compared to old growth forests. And what we were I was careful about was saying, this is not to say we need to like log over the forest to improve them, but all of these lands that were being called degraded actually in some cases had even amplified ecological function uh uh when it looked at what was going on there, what species were doing things. And I think this is useful in modern conservation thinking because it shows the if we when you start looking at ecological function and value, there's a much wider landscape that's performing things rather than just the protected areas. And uh uh and we need to think about this that this landscape, we need to think about disturbance as often being a force for good rather than a problem. Uh I've been doing some uh wonderful, some fun work recently. We had a uh a visiting student from Denmark, Skull Sondergard Sondergard, and we've been thinking all about elephants recently. Uh and uh uh uh looking firstly at the previous interglacial, so uh the uh the earth in the last few million years has been largely in periods of ice, and every 100,000 years or so there's been 10,000 years of relatively benign, stable climate, and we're in the Holocene or Anthropocene now, which has been uh uh one of those periods. So we went back to the last one, 100,000 years ago called the Eemian, but the climate of Western Europe was pretty much the same as it is now, uh maybe even a degree warmer. Uh and uh and yet when you look at the paleo evidence, you see you didn't have closed canopy forests. You had all the evidence is building up now, you had these more savannah-like landscapes across Europe. And why was that? It's because we had the straight-tussed elephant, uh like the Asian elephant, but bigger than the African elephant, roaming through these landscapes, opening them up. And many of our species of plant that exists now in Europe evolved in that scenario of these elephant landscapes of massive disturbance of megafauna messing things up. And then when we came into this uh Holocene, uh interglacial, those large animals had got extinct, possibly because of hunting by early humans in the ice ages and they wiped them out. And early medieval farming partially replaced some of those functions, this coppicing, this more disturbance that enhanced loads of biodiversity. And where we are now, the challenge we face in Western Europe now, for example, and this is this is the point why we have to think about elephants, even if we're thinking if we're thinking about modern conservation, is uh the the challenge is that uh uh now we have landscapes that are either intensively farmed or they're protected areas with no disturbance. And so we've got closed canopy forests or intensive farming. And all of these species that are adapted to natural landscapes where you can have lots of light flooding in are the species most in decline in Europe on the way out. And so we need to think of how we can disturb and mess up landscapes through megafauna, through rewilding, and through all of these things to be able to create a habitat for these species. And if you don't take this vibrancy perspective, this is a nice example, you could actually end up with the wrong conservation outcomes by just by protecting areas and letting closed goes for a forest of light.
SPEAKER_00So it strikes me that there are kind of human values in our two choices there that it you put the contrast between we would value an agricultural landscape because it's producing the food in the way that we think is the right way. Yes. Um and we would certainly value uh uh an ancient woodland just by using those terms. We already have an idea of what you're talking about, you know, old growth, oaks, and other kind of standard trees, and maybe there's a bit of kind of coppicing and so forth, but but actually we're talking about something that's lasted for a long time. Yes, um, and so we value that in one way, and we value the agriculture in another way. But what we've lacked until you've started to think about, rethink the vibrancy thing, is all of the bits in between, and also the way to modify. I mean, we still want to keep the ancient forest as it is, but the modifiers will be of agriculture and also of these other forms of habitat that would um require certain kinds of different sorts of intervention with animals, with larger animals to mess it up a bit, or with direct interventions by us, like bringing back coppicing and getting the kind of faster growth. Yes, yeah. Uh is another way of thinking about this. It opens up options, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think so having this dynamism sense of nature really opens up options, but also I'd say it's essential because in the context of climate change, uh rather than trying to lock species into position, what we need to think more about is how do we maximize the potential of nature of the biosphere to be able to negotiate new relationships, adapt and shift uh over time. And uh and a messier connected system of the natural world has more potential to do that than a set of protected areas that are very static, often late successional, locked into into into into a particular landscape. So so as both as opening up opportunities, I think when we think of a rapidly changing world, we also need to uh adopt uh some of these approaches.
SPEAKER_00Um and if we look at uh uh certain kinds of iconic species, like butterflies, you know, butterflies have been doing pretty well in this kind of hot part of middle of 2026, um, generally speaking. Uh but most butterflies, and certainly a lot of moths, have only one particular species that the larvae feed on, and the adults will feed on nectar and um other sources of uh food from a number of species. So if you've got the butterfly, you know you've got the species. Yes, uh the plant species. Um and if we if we want those things, we've got to think about how you're gonna have the the plants, and we can't be going around growing them like gardeners. You've got to create the big ass for the for the the the forces of nature to do that in the yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's really interesting. Um uh and do you do you see, I mean I'm thinking about uh if we go back to the COP, I know it's a climate cop, but do you the where you were in in Brazil last year? Um do you see the understanding of when when climate is the primary focus of the international uh discussions? Perhaps you can take us into the kind of life of a of a conference of the parties, you know, what's it like a little bit? Okay, and and do you see the evolution of some of those concepts and ideas that come into the thinking about how important it is to address both climate and nature together?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, so to talk a little bit about COPS, I've been attending on and off every few years, Climate COPS since since about 2009, I think. Uh and uh and and they're the it's it's the strange beasts. There's the the the geopolitical negotiations at the top, and offer with presidents and other other leaders, they get all the world attention. And then you have but you have this all these substrata of uh businesses and NGOs and others, and and side events and and civil society events are there as well. So it's it's it's much more than often what the news headlines capture, which is just the arguments between two or three world powers about what's going on at the top. Uh uh and the and there are these climate cops that are every year. Uh there are also other cops. There's a biodiversity convention cop that I went to for the first time in Cali in Colombia two years ago, uh, which I actually found a more comfortable space to be in because it was all about nature and biodiversity. The climate one is challenging because it's dominated by greenhouse gas emissions, which often is about fossil fuel emissions, uh uh uh uh and which is often seen as a either a governance or a technological fix. Uh uh and there's vested interests there uh in a in a big way, which there are the other cops, but more so in the climate one. Uh what I think there has been some progress is is seeing nature as part of that, uh, and initially with rainforests, then more widely, I think the idea that you need to tackle the nature and climate issues together, which I think is a good thing overall. I one note of caution though is that I often see, well, we need to protect nature because it helps us with the climate. Yeah. And this idea that nature is a utility that we can use to tackle the climate question, and which I feel uneasy about. And I think it also, yeah, going back to this sense that we live in this huge biosphere, it's a little bit disrespectful that it is some sort of utility that we need to use to solve our problem with climate.
SPEAKER_00Actually, she's gonna do a job for us, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so I think I also approve of the marriage between climate and nature, but I I'm suspicious that it could be a there has danger of being an abusive marriage where where climate abuses nature and says uh you need to be co-opted to solve solve the climate problem rather than actually we need to restore nature for all of these reasons and as well as intrinsic value as our our home uh overall. Uh but there has but I think you know for within with the with that queasiness, I think there has been more and more progress, at least of nature being on the agenda uh uh in this thing. I think the next step is to stop it being an entirely utilitarian view view of what nature does for us to to return.
SPEAKER_00Do you have a pretty good idea of what the simple solution is when it comes to climate? It's just stop using fossil fuels. Yes, yeah. It's very simple. Of course it's hugely difficult because we're we're locked into 200 years of of use of fossil fuels at a high level. Yeah. That's the simple answer.
SPEAKER_01And the the the moral hazard about bringing them together also is this sense that growing trees is our solution to our climate problem and that can be able to solve that, and even some you know very anti-climate world leaders uh are enthusiastic about planting trees, and that's a warning sign that actually, if talking enthusiastically about nature is uh some sort of cop-out from realising the gravity of the climate problem and the fundamental problem, which as you say is keeping fossil fuels on the ground, uh it can actually be unhelpful to deflect and slow things down and get us out.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think we're still in a window of hope at at this this moment, 2026. Um that the changes could happen sufficiently quickly to prevent the worst happening. Yes. Um more and more difficult every year, clearly. Um but I think we have to believe that to carry on doing all of the things that we do do. Yes. But at the at the core, I think it's still possible. It's still getting harder and harder, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's the uh certainly the the rate of climate change. I think for the given amount of emissions, the rate of change is more than was expected. Uh I think we are making progress on on on slowing down emissions, uh uh despite some of the geopolitics around that. I I I re last week I I I was uh at a meeting in China, and I'm astonished at the rate at which the technology there is shifting.
SPEAKER_00Well, take us into that your perspective. So you were in Kunming in the south of China. Yes. Biodiversity rich, half of the biodiversity of China is there in that one province. So this is so we're talking the eastern end of the Himalayas, really, isn't it? Um so a little bit about Yunnan and what you're seeing there. And also uh people quite I quite often hear, I think it's a deflection, this kind of view, which is why should we do anything because China isn't? And you say, well, hang on a minute. Yes. And then this kind of like Yes, yes. Have you really looked at what's happened in the last 20 years? And uh or even two years? Yes.
SPEAKER_01It's very easy to be out of date in China if you if you just think of China five years ago, you're way behind the curve. Right. There's so much is happening there. It's very centralized, uh, it's a very different model from the Western model, and that's got good things and bad things about it. So discomfort would some of that, yeah. Uh but the certainly you can't be saying that China's doing nothing. Uh the the degree of shift towards renewables, so low holds electric cars, towards reforesting uh all of these heavily deforested slopes, cleaning up the air, the water, it has been astonishing to see. Uh and the ability to plan and do that uh at scale is astonishing. Uh protected areas as well. Now I was in Yunnan, this the southwest of China, which is phenomenal in biodiversity. Half of the species in China are found in this area. And so many, they're still constantly. I was in the Botanic Gardens and they're constantly discovering new species every month in this uh landscape. So huge biological wealth. Uh uh, and also really interesting conversations about ecological civilization, which is something that the president and the government talks about a lot, uh different interpretations of what exactly it means. But I think as a narrative of whatever different models are, that's a narrative that we need to have. What is an ecological civilization for the West, for Africa, for India, for these places, and we may have different solutions drawing on our political traditions and heritage, but a civilization that's embedded in ecology uh as opposed to being opposed to ecology and thinking that ecology can be exploited to for progress.
SPEAKER_00This is not a um uh it's not a term that sits outside the political system, is actually in the five-year plans. Yes, yes, very much China. So the the leadership in all its forms has approved the term and have an idea that it's something that they should be trying to do and organise policies as as an outcome. Yes. Um that's pretty encouraging, actually. I mean, it's a it's a term that, as you say, is uh needs some further thinking about how you're going to define it. But but equally we could say, well, let's let's think of ecological civilization as playing out in different ways in different places. Why not? Yes, just fine, in the same way.
SPEAKER_01And and and this isn't just confined to China, as China tackles these, the scale of China means that these new technologies, these solutions are are flooding out into Africa, into India, and into other into the West as well. And so uh in some ways I think that that's a big sign of hope as well. Uh and there's a very rational approach, this is a problem, this is the evidence, and we need to find a solution. They're going for it.
SPEAKER_00Yes, uh so your centre's doing work on on uh nature recovery here in the UK as well. Yes. So a little bit of a kind of thought as to how that's how that's kind of playing out with uh the particular challenges that we have here and uh the policy changes and opportunities that we have. What how are you how are you seeing some of that? It would be interesting to be talking about ecological civilization here in the UK. Yes, yeah, in Oxfordshire, in the towns and parishes of Oxford, um, uh, but also about kind of well, what do you think a vibrant landscape looks like? Yes, for example, why not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's uh well it's interesting to uh give a little bit of origin story off of the centre, uh, and for somebody who's been a tropical ecologist for most of their career, this was really I think it was really triggered by COVID. It was triggered by the year that I couldn't go to do all these tropical research sites, and I was wondering that that the landscapes of Oxfordshire, and there was a time where you were allowed to go and meet people for work purposes, but you weren't allowed to go and just have a walk in the countryside. Quite a strange time. And so I got in touch with various farmers and started going out and visiting farms in Oxfordshire, uh partially just for the mental break of connection, but also at the same time thinking about these landscapes. And I also, the other words that resonated with me was a lot of my colleagues in Brazil, very supportive, very collaborative, really pushing things forward with the Amazon saying, and then coming to that visit me in Oxford and saying, wow, you live in amongst the most deforested landscapes on earth and uh yeah, they're just so active in the in the Amazon. Yes, yes, yeah. And so there's so much we need to do uh in this in these landscapes. And rather than take it for granted, oh yes, the Amazon is intact over there, we need to protect it, these landscapes are lost. They've been like that. Poets have written about these landscapes for hundreds of years, so therefore this these should stay as they are because that they're cultural landscapes. We have to think, you know, well, how can these be more richer, more recovered, vibrant landscapes? Uh so it's been interesting uh with the Nature Recovery Centre. We have still have a lot of focus in the tropics, but we also work in the in the UK. Uh, firstly, understanding the policy space and seeing how we could support policies such as biodiversity net gain, the specifics of that and the metrics of that uh overall, supporting local landscape recovery projects and various sorts, and partly I think that was understanding the space and what's going on in this space. Uh and then many of our team who are far more expert in this than I am in my own direct experience, but a lot, a lot uh that that that went on there. But then as the centers progressed, I I there's been a general shift by me, but I think by many people, to feel that we need to go into a slightly edgier space in that as well. That there's a lot of working within the system as it is and trying to tweak it in various ways to get a marginal more farming or better planning, uh planning an income into these landscapes. They're all important things, so we shouldn't disparage them. But maybe our role as something that that as an academic centre, but also something that has longer term, at least for now, has us longer term funding, is to think about these more radical transformations and how to explore those ideas and but then also not be an ivory tower where we publish papers about alternatives, but then see if we can deliver them in practice in real landscapes. So we're working with communities, with farmers and others to do and conservation organizations to try and.
SPEAKER_00I guess some of that will be thinking about whole landscapes, as you've kind of um inferred from the view across the Amazon, you say. Rather than thinking about this patch, which we might call a nature reserve, which we've been kind of trying to protect for you know 50 or 100 years or whatever, is that if you think of that as being this patch rather than this tiny patch, then uh and how are we going to do it over the whole of this landscape, over the whole of the downs of Oxford, or the whole of this this river valley or this watershed, yes, changes the nature of the challenge into a social and cultural landscape as well as an ecological one. Yes, for sure.
SPEAKER_01So it's about the ecological questions, it's about people's connection to land, it's uh it's about people's values around or what sort of future. And it's also about the fact that this land is going to be two or three degrees warmer in the within well we can feel it today in the heat waves, etc. Uh uh that it isn't a static thing, there's no 18th century landscape that we we need to try and preserve as some sort of idyllic equilibrium. And actually, how do we negotiate all of this? Yes, dynamic negotiation again to create something that works for the for the future.
SPEAKER_00And I mean in this year we had the wettest there by January and February, which is fabulous for trees and plants for root growth. So everything was growing really kind of vigorously, yes, and then come the summer and we've had the hottest temperatures ever. So thinking of how we think that into the future challenge is going to be pretty live challenges, isn't it? Um uh a hero or a heroine uh of yours in all of this. Who might you point to?
SPEAKER_01I mean I can think of endless people I've been inspired by in the field in various places in the tropics. Uh uh people that just uh I I think the collectively I'd say the heroes and heroines tend to be all of these small organizations of people just making a change at a smaller scale and often not involved in the macro picture and the and the geopolitics or financial mechanisms, but actually just committed to making a change locally. Uh, and that that often builds up the momentum. But at a different level, also in the COPS. As I said, you know, the the you hear a lot about with some cynicism about the geopolitics and why are these people gathering around the world, but underneath you see all of these webs of people dedicating their careers and their their passions to try and build new solutions, try out different different ways of doing that. So I I I came back, for example, in the last COP quite quite energized by all of that the thing that the underbelly that often doesn't get the attention. So I'd I'd say the collective hero and heroine is the underbelly. Very good. The social underbelly. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Lovely. Um, and and those numbers are not, I mean, they're not largely not added up. I mean, you've got all these social groups, you've got these individuals, you've got members, people are members of organizations, or just trying to do the right thing, or indigenous tribes working as a whole, kind of culture to do stuff, or businesses do trying to do the right thing. Is that the I mean, I don't think it would be particularly helpful to try and add them all up, but it's worth remembering that's very much. More abundant than many people think. Yes, yes. It really is, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And it still drives more of the world than many people think. But actually there's there's a huge churning social civil society underneath.
SPEAKER_00A book to recommend?
SPEAKER_01Oh okay, I uh yeah. Uh I we recently had a uh a visitor here for the last few months uh called David Abram, uh who is a very unusual person. Uh and uh he described himself as an eco-philosopher and a shaman. Uh uh and he wrote a book about 20 years ago that I came across on a friend's bookshelf when I was staying there, uh, and it's called The Spell of the Sensuous. And at that time it totally bewitched me at that time, and I hadn't really followed uh him uh uh his writing since then much, but then uh he was he we had the privilege of having him here for a couple of months, and it was like having uh well he helps to describe it these people shamans, these slightly awkward people that don't fit well into modern society, but their job is to make the more than human world porous and to connect you to this wider world. And I think both his book, which I would recommend, uh and his for his online videos and things do a job a job off that. They're they're not about the details about nature recovery policy or or conservation practice, it's more about changing your starting baseline and becoming it very attuned to this immense thing that we live inside, and having that as your fundamental emotional core and reference point from which you then launch your various actions and commitments and things. Uh so I would say that's that's a really good choice.
SPEAKER_00He starts with he's in a cave and the rain, his rain is falling, and he watches a spider come down, and there's uh that as you've described, this kind of emotional response to it, yes, which you've also described with the with the Amazon. I mean, without that, uh we're going to struggle to get up every morning and carry on the good work. I mean, you have to have something more creating that feeling. So that was interesting that it was here uh for a period of time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we had a wonderful workshop in Whiteham Woods for a whole day. Oh, great up this as well. And I think uh one of the things I learned from that is starting with connection. Before you get into your science and your details, uh it certainly shaped the way I give presentations. You know, I always try and start with getting people connected viscerally to whatever I'm talking about, and then go on and explain the science uh there as well. And that's a that's a lesson I think for all storytelling as well.
SPEAKER_00It really is that uh a key action for listeners and viewers. Is there a uh what would you recommend that people do? Um go out and watch and listen, be attentive to nature in some way?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think linked to what we just said, certainly. I think get that connection. Uh it depends where they're coming from, I think. I think if they're if they're already interested in nature engaged, maybe act climate activists and things, sometimes in the frenzy of that, you can that that that connection gets lost because you just you know you you started from that point, but your life's just got too busy and overcommitted in deadlines and proposals and media sorts. So if you're in that space, make sure you go back to that connection and bring that bring that connection into your into your your your practice. Uh on the other hand, there may be others that you know have the time to have that connection, and then I'd say don't stop at the connection, use that connection to move into your practice and make it in making your contribution, turn that connection into action as well. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Perfectly put. Well, wonderful. Thanks very much, Yadvinder. Yadvinder Mali. So you're you're a professor of ecosystem science here at Oxford, and I think what's interesting is that we've discussed uh science in a very broad perspective here about the connections with other people, with the planet, um, and how we turn those concepts into stories as well. So um lovely to have you on. Thank you. It's been absolutely fascinating, Jules. Thank you. Thank you.