Transcriber: Ben-Hur Nakagawa Reviewer: Emma Gon
We are facing an enormous challenge.
The climate is changing and we are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.
Failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions
will have devastating consequences for our planet.
And we even need to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,
because we are moving too slowly.
So you probably are thinking, maybe scientists
and engineers are already working on a solution for us
so we don’t have to do anything.
Something like this. This is a CO2, a direct air capture facility.
It's currently in the experimental phase.
And we need about a million of these to scale up
to compensate for all our CO2 we put in the atmosphere every year.
So we are not there yet.
But where we are is we can just use nature.
Nature - the oceans, trees, algae or the grasses in the soil.
This is proven technology,
technology that have been taking CO2 out of the atmosphere for millions of years,
and we can just use it right away. We don't have to invent it.
So, when people ask me, what I do for a living,
and I tell them I am a scientist, they usually get quite excited,
up until that I am saying that I’m an ecologist working on coastal swamps.
I do, however, understand where they are coming from.
When you asked me about 20 years ago what I would be doing now,
I probably would have said that I would be working on cell biology
to maybe work on a cure for cancer or maybe some other disease.
However, around that same time,
I also started realizing that the big challenges are not inside our bodies,
but are actually outside in the environment.
And actually, what we ecologists do is quite similar to what medics do, right?
So our ecosystems, how they are put together,
how they break down,
understanding the intrinsic processes that shape these ecosystems
is in many ways a similar challenge as to the understanding of the cells
and the organs to drive high tech solutions
and medicines like the medics do.
So what we ecologists do
is in many ways a similar high tech solution.
We try to understand these ecosystems
and then find ways to restore them and protect them.
So I don’t mind if people mock me and call me Dr. Swamp.
I fell for this ecosystem, this coastal ecosystem about 15 years ago now.
And this is my office and lab now. And look at it, isn’t it amazing?
This is like I can keep looking at this for ages,
but I have to do this talk within 12 minutes.
So but if you look at it, you see these amazing tidal creeks.
They are big near the sea and they become smaller
and smaller towards the land.
They are looking just like the branches of a tree.
And what is even more amazing is that these creeks,
they are not too big and not too small,
they are just the right size.
Just the right size to deliver the sediments and the nutrients
where they have to be.
And it’s just like our arteries in our bodies.
And that's essential for those ecosystems,
because if those creek networks are not the right size,
then they will not be resilient to climate change and sea level rise.
But they are. And these networks,
they develop from scratch through self-organization,
interactions between water flow, mud
and plants is everything you need to shape these landscapes.
Basically, it works like this.
So if a patch of vegetation is big enough,
then the water start flowing around it and speeding up the flow
and that makes this and that carves the creeks into the mud.
And at the same time, within the patch,
the water slows down and also behind the patch
and there this sediment can deposit.
And there you get this development of the land and these high differences,
this is all you need for these landscapes to develop.
During the development, these ecosystems do also take up
about at least three times the amount of carbon a forest can.
So at the same time, as I already said,
these creek networks, they filter out the water
so they are next to a giant carbon sink and carbon storage.
They are also a sort of giant kidney cleaning the water.
And due to these feedbacks,
they also become a hotspot for biodiversity.
You have no [inaudible] creatures,
all kinds of rare saltwater and plants, fish and birds.
And [also] importantly,
these coastal ecosystems can serve in our coastal defense
because they built a blend.
The water depth in front of the dike with marsh in front it
it needs depths... the water flows
much better than a dike without such a foreland
and therefore these dikes are much more much lower and much cheaper to maintain.
So where I am coming from, the south west of the Netherlands,
Salem, we are famous for the Dutch Delta works.
These Delta Works have been built in response to a storm surge in 1953,
that wreaked havoc and killed about almost 2000 people.
So building these dams was a logical next technological step.
A solution, a high tech solution to coastal safety.
But there is also a dark side to these dams.
Although they keep the water at bay, they also disconnect the water.
And the resulting fully connected waterways and also the drowning
and erosion of intertidal nature behind these dams.
Fish have difficulty reaching the inland waters
and birds are losing ground to forage and rest on.
Moreover, this technology that we are now using
for almost a thousand years since the Middle Ages,
that keeps us safe, also immediately has a negative effect.
It prevents the land from building up.
Actually, our coastal lands are now sinking.
And at the same time, sea level is rising.
So this high difference is becoming bigger and bigger,
and that makes our land more and more vulnerable over time.
But what if we can go for a different approach?
Not going further on this escalating path of higher and higher dikes,
more expensive dams but do something different.
Bring back...
Use the power of nature to solve this issue.
What we do normally, for example, with our bodies
we use the power of our immune system
to train our bodies to fight off diseases. That’s a nature based solution.
Something similar we can do with this problem.
And probably you have guessed it.
We can bring back marshes to solve this issue.
So if we allow the sea to build back lands,
we can do that with marshes in front of dikes or between two dikes.
And once these landscapes develop,
they become a robust coastal defense landscape,
coastal defense landscape.
And even if these dikes breach,
because of the build up of land in front of a dike,
the damage behind the dike will be much less.
And also some damage on the marsh,
can like any living system, just heal by itself.
You don’t need to rebuild these marshes.
The marshes can fix themselves.
So this whole constellation is much cheaper to maintain
than if we just go for these concrete dams and dikes.
So, nature can be the solution.
If we let it, nature can help us solve the big problems
we are facing at the moment.
I’m not saying that we have to go back to nature.
No, but we have to learn from nature.
Reconnect with nature, let nature lead,
but come up with smart hybrids between nature and technology
to make the step forward.
Nature based solutions are the high tech solutions for a sustainable future.
It is, however, of the utmost importance
that we then make sure that our climate is not changing further,
that we limit sea level rise and that we stop polluting
the air, the soil and the water.
Because if we don't do that,
we erode and limit the possibilities for nature to be this technology.
Therefore...
I envision a high tech Delta Works 2.0,
built out of nature and not concrete.
Because...
the way is not to go back to nature, but go forward with nature.
Thank you. (Applause)