The Twin Crises: Biodiversity Loss & Climate Change

🌍Introducing  Dr. Jenna Lawrence from Columbia University, Columbia Climate School!

Jenna Lawrence is a conservation biologist and behavioral ecologist whose work covers the intersection of biodiversity, climate change, and other sustainability topics.

Her session covers the concept of the ‘twin crises’ of biodiversity and climate change and their inextricably linked relationship. She will discuss how biodiversity, much like climate, is a fundamental characteristic of our Earth system and includes not only individual plant, animal, and microbial species, but also their ecological interactions. Climate change is exacerbating biodiversity loss, which further reduces ecosystem resilience and efficiency, jeopardizing the delivery of services essential to human well-being such as water purification, flood control, soil fertility, pollination and seed dispersal, temperature moderation, direct material and non-material benefits, carbon sequestration, control of non-indigenous species, and disease regulation.