Inn at Penn, Living Room
3600 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA
Event Recap
On October 23, 2019, Richard Weller, Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, and Co-Executive Director, The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, Weitzman School of Design, presented a special lecture on “hotspot cities,” which he defines as global flashpoints lying between unique areas of biodiversity and urban growth. He has published research on these areas in his Atlas for the End of the World.
As heralded by National Geographic and Scientific American, the Atlas “lays the groundwork for the 142 nations that preside over the world’s biodiversity hotspots to now view climate change, biodiversity, and urbanization as interrelated phenomena and plan for the future.” It serves as an important reference for the implementation of the UN Convention on Biodiversity and other global agreements—especially Agenda 2030’s Sustainable Development Goal 15, which calls for the halt of biodiversity loss.
Coming almost 450 years after the world’s first atlas, Weller’s project audits the status of land use and urbanization in the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. The Atlas does so, first, by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots in comparison to the United Nations’ 2020 targets under the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity; and second, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories is on a collision course with endangered species.
For the topic of his lecture, Weller chose to reflect on this research in light of the approaching deadline for the UN’s biodiversity targets. Weller introduced his work by describing the tension between the need to sequester carbon emissions and the land requirements for supporting a global population expected to reach 10 billion within the century observing that “there’s nowhere left to grow.” Weller also pointed to the complexities involved in developing a comprehensive understanding of Earth systems, noting that “if you need to change a planetary system, you almost need to understand every molecule.” As climate science grows more nuanced, Weller anticipates experts will gain new abilities for processing data to understand the full consequences of emissions and extensive land-use practices.
Weller identifies significant differences among the current adaptation, resilience, and mitigation approaches to climate change. Though resilience may look like “sustainability without hope,” he explains that this model most closely matches official responses to climate change to date, whereas adaptation implies a much more passive stance, primarily oriented toward retreat. In contrast to both, mitigation efforts seek to defend communities and ecosystems from the effects of climate change while also confronting its primary causes.
Weller underlines the importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in protecting planetary biodiversity, though he adds that additional measures are necessary to promote ecosystems that are “representative and connected.” As Weller’s research stresses, this means reorganizing land uses to lessen the isolation of biodiverse areas like preserves and national parks, allowing for the free movement of species and the diversification of their genes. He indicates that these connections are crucial for the continued health of planetary hotspots, and that sea-level rise and climbing temperatures only add to the urgency of reconstructing ecosystems for vulnerable species. Additionally, out of 36 global biological hostpots identified by Weller, 21 currently fail to meet the 2020 conservation targets set by the UN.
In response, Weller envisions a system of continuous preserved landscapes running latitudinally through climatic zones, allowing for the migration of species as their habitats change. Such a project will necessarily require cooperation on the international stage. Weller points to the importance of binding conservation agreements as part of the broad agenda to preserve environments for the future. As he says, “we have a responsibility, when everything is at stake.”
