Senior Staffer Levi Cohen journeyed yesterday into the simultaneously futuristic and retro space of the Hall of the Universe in the AMNH’s Hayden Planetarium to experience In the Spirit of Collaboration: Voices from Ecology, the Arts, and Faith-Led Approaches to Nature Conservation.

Empathy and connection were the major themes of the night at the American Museum of Natural History, where a panel discussion was held as part of the 2019 Student Conference on Conservation Science. Hosted by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation and moderated by the Center’s Director, Ana Luz Porzecanski, it was an earnestly felt discussion that occasionally ran a little light on concrete approaches to the issue at hand.

The panelists were Dekila Chungyalpa, the director of the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which focuses on bringing faith leaders into environmental and climate action work; Martín Mendez, the director of the Southern Cone – Patagonia region for the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Madhur Anand, a professor of ecology at the University of Guelph as well as a poet.

Porzecanski began by asking each of her panelists about their backgrounds, identities, and work. Chungyalpa described being raised in Sikkim in the Himalayas, as well as her early environmental action work in Southeast Asia; she described feeling hopeless in the face of the challenges she was confronting, and finding hope again in using faith leaders as climate leaders. In particular, she mentioned Buddhist monks and nuns, none with any scientific educational background, learning to understand in their own ways the issues the world was facing. Mendez, a Buenos Aires native, discussed the difficulty of building largescale ecological solutions, and the importance of empowering people as the users of and advocates for nature. Anand, a native of Thunder Bay, Ontario (on Lake Superior, the homeland of the Ojibwe/Anishinaabe people), explained how she began as a scientist, eventually writing her first poem in her last year of graduate school.

The conversation then turned to what it means to exist under multiple identities or labels— such as poet, scientist, or person of faith. Chungyalpa noted that for indigenous people, the sense of self was more porous, extending out to the land and making their voices a vital part of the environmental movement. The concept of eco-anxiety was brought up, as was solastalgia, a term coined earlier this century to describe “the distress caused by environmental change.” Repeatedly emphasized by all the panelists was the need of conservation movements to reach out and across to “the common people” – science can’t be isolated any more. Mendez brought up the possibility of using the beauty of nature as a motivator, citing an arts clinic that exists within a Chilean national park.

Chungyalpa and Anand then entered into detailed descriptions of what it looks like to approach science from alternative viewpoints, saying that, at times, scientific observation can put the observer at a remove from the things they care about, the very reasons they got into the field in the first place. Chungyalpa described the possibilities of using common themes to connect disparate groups, such as Anishinaabe oral traditions surrounding the birth of Star Woman as an analogue for ecosystem connectivity and interdependence. Traditional knowledge systems and alliances with the sources of that knowledge, she said, are vital. She also noted that it was important to modulate one’s language depending on the group being addressed. With faith-based groups, she used not the term “biodiversity” but instead referred to “the sanctity of life,” figuring out a way to shape the conversation for both parties. Another example was when Chungyalpa gave a talk at a conservative university— she extended the language of pro-life people to describe caring for the entire life of a person, which ought to mean caring for the world in which that person will grow up. Language is often the way that people create and maintain in-group/out-group relationships, so for Chungyalpa, it was important to use it as a constructive tool. A controversial approach to bridging gaps, but perhaps a deeply effective one.

Anand talked about the potential restrictions of the trained scientist’s gaze. (She included that old chestnut of PhD standing for “permanently head-damaged”.) She read us a few of her poems to show how the unexpressed could be expressed in verse to expose a new worldview. Anand also emphasized that she didn’t want to disregard her knowledge in her poetry, and several of her poems consisted of words taken from her own scientific journal articles. She talked about the issue of audience: scientific journals are usually written for a very small group of scientists, whereas poems are more accessible to anyone. Poems, as opposed to statistics-heavy articles, provide the opportunity to build empathy.

Then came a brief Q&A section, where the panelists discusses issues like the scaleability of conservation (it’s difficult- the effort must be both large-scale and local), diversity in climate action movements (it exists, and the perception of it as a white, affluent concern is largely a myth), and feelings of alienation in the scientific community (a concerted effort needs to be made to make scientists human, and not just a distant figure in a labcoat).

The event ended with Porzecanski asking each panelist to give a single parting thought. Mendez began by reminding us that though there were lots of concerns, this moment right now is the best in history to be part of the conservation movement- in terms of the science and the engagement. Chungyalpa noted that the Earth is always cradling us, and as such requires gratitude and reciprocation— something of a callback to an earlier part of the panel, where she found strength in the Jewish philosophical concept of mending “your corner of the tapestry of the world”. Anand, quoting a poem, stated simply: “Grab indifference by the neck.

Ana Luz Porzecanski closed it all out by urging everybody to go out and find common ground. Q.E.D., Amen.

Sign by Andol via Wikimedia Commons.