Melting glaciers, plant genetics, protection from forever chemicals, and more: An annual look at the conservation horizon reveals priorities for the years ahead.
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Each year since 2009, researchers from Cambridge University have brought together scientists, policymakers, practitioners, and other experts from around the world to identify the emerging threats and opportunities likely to affect biological conservation in the future. This year, a team of 32 authors distilled a list of 15 issues that they judged to be most novel and potentially impactful.
“The 15 issues presented here are essential reading for anyone interested in global biodiversity conservation and potential future trajectories,” the authors wrote in this year’s paper. “Whilst it is impossible to predict exactly how the future will transpire, all the issues raised in this latest horizon scan are worthy of increased consideration from the conservation sector, as we seek to address the drivers of biodiversity loss.”
Here are the results of their 16th horizon scan:
Not-So-Forever Chemicals?
Some 15,000 kinds of synthetic chemicals collectively known as PFAS or “forever chemicals” have dispersed widely through the environment. With recent recognition of the physiology-disrupting threats these chemicals pose to humans and animals, researchers have ramped up efforts to find ways to destroy them. Recent advances have brought forward several new approaches that hold promise for removing the pollutants from the environment and limiting their spread and potential for future harm. They include using heat generated by electricity to destroy them in soil and deploying a mix of other chemicals to degrade them in drinking water. Reducing the presence of PFAS in the environment can help reduce their threat to wildlife already on the brink from other stresses.
Nighttime Ozone
Low-level ozone is an air pollutant produced when nitrogen oxides combine with organic compounds released into the air by vehicles, factories, homes, and trees. Recent observations in some places have shown a nighttime increase in the odorless gas, which can harm ecosystems. The reason remains unclear, but cutting emissions of nitrogen oxides and organic compounds through targeted strategies such as selecting low-emitting trees for urban areas could help alleviate the problem.
Tree Trouble
Two EU laws are changing the conditions for forest harvesting: the Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products, effective at the end of 2024 — which reduces the risk that wood harvesting will destroy or degrade forests — and the EU Forest Strategy for 2030, which aims to prevent harm to old-growth forests. At the same time, wood consumption is increasing, and disasters like wildfires and pest outbreaks are constraining supply. Much of the land that could provide wood in the future is in private hands, further complicating the ability to meet demand. The new laws are good news when it comes to lessening forest destruction and damage. They also may stimulate tree planting and more intensive management in Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, they could make it harder for the EU to achieve climate and other sustainability goals.
Micro Filters
Novel porous micromaterials known as metal organic frameworks can form the basis of new technologies that offer environmental benefits such as soaking up pollutants, storing carbon dioxide, and improving batteries needed to support renewable energy. Even newer variations on the theme, nonmetal organic frameworks, have yet more desirable characteristics. Together, these two types of innovative filters and collectors have potential to contribute to species conservation by enhancing our ability to remove pollutants from ecosystems, decreasing the need to mine metals, and directly and indirectly helping to reduce the concentrations of climate-changing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Elements From Algae
So-called “rare earth” elements such as neodymium and yttrium are in increasing demand for use in renewable energy technologies, medical procedures, and more. Obtaining a secure supply can be problematic, though, because these elements tend to be dispersed rather than concentrated in the earth, and much of the current supply comes from China. Recent discoveries that certain algae can take up and concentrate rare earth elements from wastewater and ocean water hold promise for generating a novel supply of the elements. As a bonus, processes for further densifying the elements can yield biomass (fuel derived from algae) that can help provide the energy needed to do so.
Thrip-Tripping Hair Traps
Conventional pesticides pose threats to pollinators and other beneficial insects, with cascading adverse impacts on entire ecosystems. The search for safer alternatives has turned up an intriguing option: selectively trapping undesirable insects by luring them to a sticky surface coated with hairs that mimics natural pest-deterring “trichome” hairs on plants. The approach has been tested experimentally with some success on western flower thrips, which spread a pathogen affecting tomatoes, piquing interest in applying it to control other species as well. If the approach becomes more widely applicable, it could help reduce the need for ecosystem-harming pest control practices.
Customized Plant Evolution
What if we could hyperdrive plants’ ability to cope with climate change or other human assaults, or selectively kill weeds or invasives without harming crops or other desirable species? A technology called genetic welding may soon make that possible. Researchers recently developed the ability to insert into a plant’s genome a specialized DNA-based tool called a gene drive that dramatically enhances the chances the gene it contains will be passed from one generation to the next. Applied judiciously, this capability could speed adaptation to changing environmental conditions and reduce the use of ecosystem-harming interventions like pesticides. However, care will be needed to prevent gene drives from getting out of control in target species or leaping to nontarget plants.
No Heat Needed
It’s not often a basic physics discovery opens the door to exciting new opportunities to more sustainably meet human needs, but the current moment is an exception. Researchers recently reported that water commonly uses light without heat to transform from liquid to gas in nature. Recognition of this phenomenon of “photomolecular evaporation” has sparked ideas for new ways to improve the efficiency of desalination plants, which produce water for uses such as consumption and irrigation from brackish or ocean water. It also holds promise for improving our ability to predict the effects of greenhouse gas production on Earth’s climate.
Climate-Friendly Use for Old Cement
Cement production is currently responsible for more than 7 percent of global CO2-eq emissions and is increasing rapidly. In addition, extraction of the raw materials used to make it harms ecosystems. New technology is making it possible to use old cement in place of conventional material in one stage of steel recycling, which also emits greenhouse gases. Not only that, but after the material has done its job there, what’s left can go back into the cement production cycle. How much the process reduces greenhouse gas emissions depends on the details. But with cement production expected to grow one-third by 2050, this offers a potentially valuable approach to reducing cement’s adverse impacts on biodiversity.
Hot Pockets
Technologies that use the heat beneath the Earth’s surface to generate electricity can be 10 times more productive if they tap into pockets of molten rock found near volcanoes. As the ability to access these hot pockets grows, so do concerns about the ramifications for ecosystems. Plans to further explore near-magma geothermal reservoirs and exploit them as an energy source in Iceland in 2026 open the door to a novel opportunity to reduce climate-changing fossil fuel use. At the same time, they raise a red flag for potential application in the tropics and other biodiversity-rich areas where the technology could stimulate the development of habitat-disrupting industry and policies.
Water, Water, Everything
As the most common substance on Earth, water is easy to take for granted. But recent modeling suggests that its ability to sustain life may be at risk. Some 3 billion people and 15.5 million square miles (40 million square kilometers) of land potentially face shortages of clean water by 2050, thanks to changes in quality and distribution due to alterations to Earth’s climate and land use as well as contamination with nitrogen and other pollutants. Such disruption would not only affect ecosystems directly but could also alter where people live, posing new challenges to habitats and so new threats to species conservation.
Southern Sea Ice
The Southern Ocean has seemed to avoid the extensive losses of ice being observed due to climate change in the Arctic and elsewhere — until now. In recent years scientists have observed extensive reductions of seasonal sea ice around the entire perimeter of Antarctica. This trend holds portents for living things large and small as the location and extent of algae that thrive at ice edges alter, the penetration of light into the ocean increases, and ecosystem-wide shifts potentially favor algae over animal life.
Glacier on the Go
One of the wild cards of climate change has been the melting rate of glaciers in the cold regions of the world, which hold enough water to substantially raise the level of Earth’s oceans. Recent observations show the Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica is melting more quickly than anticipated due to insufficiently anticipated consequences of early loss of ice. Water from the glacier alone could increase sea level by more than 1.6 feet (half a meter). If the loss of the glacier leads to the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, that number soars to more than 10 feet (3 meters). Resulting coastal inundation around the world would dramatically alter ecosystems directly and cause mass migrations of humans that could further threaten species. Geoengineering could slow the loss, but that also carries risk of unintended adverse consequences for biodiversity.
Mucking up the Sea Bottom
Much of Earth’s carbon is locked up in the sediments on the ocean floor, and more is added each day. Trawling and other disturbances can stir up sediments and eventually move that carbon back into the atmosphere, where it’s able to contribute to climate change. To date there has been little regulation of human activities that disrupt this part of the planet. But as fishing, mining, and other potential for disturbance grow, attention to the value of this resource in storing greenhouse gas precursors, along with strategies to protect it, could go a long way toward preventing future unintended consequences of meddling with the seafloor.
Wind and Sea
Giant wind turbines attached to the bottom of the ocean or floating on the surface are being constructed or considered around the world as a promising source of electricity to replace fossil fuels. Conservation threats include disrupting travel pathways for animals, changing physical and chemical traits of the ocean water, and disrupting currents and thus movements of creatures floating in them. Researchers are working to understand the extent to which such shifts will not only affect ocean life in the immediate vicinity but create larger snowballing effects through the broader ocean ecosystem as a first step in mitigating adverse impacts on biodiversity.
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In addition to the new elements, the researchers reviewed the horizon scan’s predictions from a decade ago to see how they fared and how they connected to this year’s report. Among their findings:
- As predicted, the loss of sea ice in the southern hemisphere has disrupted krill populations. New research has shown that these animals have migrated, likely due to climate change — affecting the birds and mammals who depend on them for food.
- Loss of sea ice was and remains a concern for life along the Antarctic coastline.
- Algae have a repeat performance as a potential benefit — in the previous report as a substitute for palm oil, and in this one as a source of rare earth elements.
- Electric vehicle adoption has been higher than was anticipated in 2015.
- The effect on the environment from increased cocaine and cannabis production remains a concern.
- Impact investment, noted in 2015 as in a growth spurt, continues strong, although biodiversity is a minor beneficiary and demand exceeds supply.
This story by Mary Hoff was originally published by The Revelator and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
For details on many other emerging threats and conservation opportunities, visit Mary Hoff’s coverage of the previous 10 conservation horizon studies at Ensia.
