Conservation... while it can seem like a, from the outside, perhaps, a rather
depressing subject. Nature is in general in decline globally and in many cases
that's very, very severe both for species and for people and that's extremely
important - we have to convey that information. We'll talk about what's happening in
terms of tropical deforestation, about rates of loss around the world, what's
driving that. But we'll also go and look at, for instance, the Brazilian Amazon,
where in the last ten years deforestation rates have declined by 80 per cent.
Now we don't hear about that in the news, it's not sexy to talk about good news,
and we'll start to understand why that's happening and
what that means in terms of the global climate, what it means in terms of local people's
livelihoods and so on. There are lots of places now around the world where things
are getting better not worse and so we try very much the focus on those answers
as well because then we can learn from them, so we can start to scale up and
because fundamentally people, the general public, if you tell them there's a problem
but you don't tell them there's a solution, how can you expect them to
engage with with making life better? So you have to
engage people in positive stories. So beginning to
understand those stories and celebrating them is really key to conservation's future and a
key part of the ideas that we try to convey to students coming through. I think
teaching is absolutely fantastic, I find it probably the best aspect of my entire
job. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to teach here in Cambridge. The topic I'm
trying to talk about - conservation, how to save the planet, how to
save biodiversity for future generations - to me that's one of the most important
challenges with humanity faces. And so with teaching that you've got the chance
to try and turn on really bright people that are going to do fantastic
things with their lives, to get some of them to think about using
that in their future career and that's that's an extraordinary opportunity.
We're very lucky, often teaching at the level of our own research. To be able to
stand up and explain that people, very bright people, for the first time you
really have to understand what you're talking about
and so that causes you... that forces a sense of honesty about how well you
understand things and very often I'll find them trying to explain something I
think I understand, when I'm trying to sort out a lecture or trying to talk to students in a
supervision, and it becomes obvious that actually there's something you don't
quite understand, or they've thought of something that you didn't think of before and that changes
your grasp even if something you thought about quite a lot beforehand.
That continual checking of your understanding of things that you get through
teaching is a great catalyst for your own research as well.
He supervised me for a small part of my
undergraduate course and getting to spend an hour going through a
piece of work you're doing with a Professor at the University, I think that's a
very fortunate thing that Cambridge can offer, that you can have
small group contact time with people who are leading researchers in their field
at the coalface of research and doing many other things. I think Andrew is... when he first
introduced me to the idea that economics and conservation weren't entirely
separate disciplines and that very much influenced my choice of
my Master's, and my subsequent PhD is on behavioral economics, essentially, and I think
that's something that biologists don't get taught enough and... yeah, I think it's
really good that Andrew brought into the curriculum.
We try and use a few different techniques in the
way we teach so inevitably we give lectures to large classes of students
when we try and do other things. I quite often tell stories. My second year
course is actually a load of stories, I mean, I talk through it, there's science,
there're figures, there're statistics but I try and tell it as a series of stories of what
happened to the planet in the past and what that tells us about what we're
doing now. And then we talk about solutions, so we don't just give you the
problems and leave you thinking it's all going to hell in a handcart, we think we
talk about what can be done what is being done by different
people around the world. So a really exciting proportion of our students now
go into careers in conservation - there are lots of other careers you can do with
a Zoology degree, both within Zoology and science generally, and in the
the general world of public service or in the private sector - but one things we're
trying to do is bring students into conservation careers. Some of those will
do research careers, like I've been lucky enough to pursue, many of them will work in
conservation NGOs trying to change things on the ground and in government agencies,
that's very important role and indeed in intergovernmental agencies, so those working
in the big conventions around climate change
and biodiversity, and then a really important group of them going to careers where they
are using their conservation skills but they may be working in other bits of
government or in the private sector.
The Royal Society has a motto,
which I think serves for most of the bright young minds I meet around here as well,
which is 'nullius in verba' - take no one's word for it. And the students that you get here,
time and again, they don't take your word for it. if you say something,
they say why? What about this, what about that, what about this other idea I've just thought of?
And that continuous questioning, which gives us lively and on our toes, is
what makes teaching here and working with young students like that so fantastic.