Presentation Summary:
Linkages between Climate Change and Biodiversity

Many studies of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity have focused on whether or not rapid changes in climate would lead to reductions in diversity. By and large, the results have suggested that rapid changes in climate would have adverse consequences for biological diversity in today's landscape. My focus is on a different aspect of the relationship between these two issues: the degree to which these two environmental issues are intrinsically linked in both their underlying causes and possible solutions.

Many of the driving forces that are endangering the Earth's climate and diversity of life are the same and are due to similar factors in our needs to provide the basic necessities of life. The need to increase agricultural productivity, the need to provide the most basic resources for economic development, and the desires to achieve equitable benefits from the use of natural resources are major contributors both to climate change and to losses of biodiversity. Therefore, the ways in which societies might seek to address these issues also have important common features. One of the many challenges for effective policy action on these critical issues is in fact not to treat them as separate, but to look for actions that achieve synergies.

Biographical Sketch:

Anthony Janetos recently joined World Resources Institute as Senior Vice President and Chief of Program. Previously, he served as Senior Scientist for the Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program in NASA's Office of Earth Science, and was Program Scientist for the Landsat 7 mission. Dr. Janetos has many years of experience in managing scientific research programs on a variety of ecological and environmental topics, including air pollution effects on forests, climate change impacts, land-use change, ecosystem modeling, and the global carbon cycle. He is currently a co-chair of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, and a lead author in the IPCC Special Report on Land-Use Change and Forestry. Dr. Janetos graduated Magna cum Laude from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in biology, and earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in biology from Princeton University.

Relevant Publications:

Janetos, Anthony C. Do We Still Need Nature?: The Importance of Biological Diversity. Consequences. Vol. 3 Number 1 (1997): 17.

Watson, R.T., J.A. Dixon, S.P. Hamburg, A.C. Janetos, R.H. Moss. 1998. Protecting Our Planet, Securing Our Future: Linkages Among Global Environmental Issues and Human Needs. United Nations Environment Programme/US National Aeronautics and Space Administration/The World Bank.