Phoebe Barnard: “Our vision is regenerative, collaborative, and nourishing…”

Dr. Phoebe Barnard is an American global change scientist and professor of conservation biology and environmental futures at the University of Washington. She writes extensively on the vulnerability of biodiversity and ecosystems to climate and land use change. 

Phoebe is a member of several global initiatives, including the Club of Rome‘s Planetary Emergency Partnership, one of five core co-authors of the 2020 paper World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, lead author of the action-focused 2021 World Scientists’ Warnings into Action: Local to Global, second of 11 co-authors of the 2023 World Scientists’ Warning: the Behavioural Crisis Driving Ecological Overshoot, a provocative collaboration of scientists, educators, and global marketing strategists.

She is also a major co-author of Earth at Risk: an Urgent Call to End the Age of Destruction and Forge a Just and Sustainable Future.

PG: Why does biodiversity not get the attention it rightly deserves?

PB: We do have a tunnel-vision approach to our problems. I think it must be a function of our dominating western, colonizing society with its power relationships, reductionist science, individualism, and broken relationship with Nature. We are used to looking at problems through a narrow gaze, and as a result, we fail to see that virtually all our problems, whether societal or environmental, are a result of common root causes. We don’t see our cultural dominance as part of the problem, but in my view, it certainly is. We have a kind of disturbing human supremacy and cultural arrogance, which also devalues and commodifies both our relationships with Nature and with each other. This is desperately tragic.

The good news, though, of course, is that by treating the root causes – which I see as our human numbers, appetites, and mindsets (or our population, hyper-consumption, and attitudes) – we can solve most of our problems all at once. And that requires a spiritual and values change, which will enable economic, social-cultural, and political change. Everything flows from that.

“We have a kind of disturbing human supremacy and cultural arrogance, which also devalues and commodifies both our relationships with Nature and with each other.”

PG: Don’t you think the political reality of today undermines bioregionalism?

PB: Yes, I do think so, especially in the USA and countries that have copied its economic and social approaches in the interests of building affluence. Australia and Canada especially come to mind, but also increasingly India, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan … the list goes on. It seems to be a particularly vile Commonwealth arrogance and profiteering mindset. Personally, and I’m invoking a family joke here, “if I were god,” I would probably place a selection of Indigenous and tribal governments and the governments of Bhutan, Costa Rica, Namibia, and all the Nordic countries in charge of establishing a new global economy and united Earth Charter (I’m working on bringing all the siloed existing attempts together!) to guide governments who want to move into the future. Not every government will wish to do so, and maybe that’s fine. Let people vote with their feet, but we need to be aware that climate change is forcing people onto their feet by the hundreds of millions, too.

It is better that we manage land and waters via bioregions than by essentially colonial straight lines or lines along rivers. African countries, and others, have been managing transboundary water basins and mountain ranges fairly effectively for decades with bioregional management. A North American-based global initiative, the Department of Bioregions, is trying to develop just that, with gentle but profound social and environmental reframing in the kind of society we wish to have, and how we might get there.

PG: Alaskan rivers are turning orange due to permafrost thawing? What are the adverse implications downstream?

PB: This is a truly distressing process. The thawing of permafrost – in the Northern Hemisphere, about one-fourth of the entire hemisphere – is unleashing a cascade of changes along with minerals like iron, cadmium, nickel, and mercury, which turn rivers orange, acidic, and biologically dead through acidity and toxicity. As a scientist said, “it’s a Pandora’s icebox of unexpected consequences.” The implications of this for tundra biodiversity, including for human settlements and cities downstream, are profound.

“But for those who have taken care of these lands for millennia, the removal of dams allows immense healing to be done from many wounds of land theft, genocide and cultural and economic wounds.”

To me, this shows how we are entering a whirlwind of dynamic planetary change – but it’s worse than that sounds. It’s an ecological unraveling at a huge scale and rapid speed. Now, this must have happened with every rapid thaw of the planet after ice ages. We know that Earth is incredibly dynamic, with speciation often happening explosively, and extinction happening, well, like an oxygen-choked implosion. But although we scientists are still trying to assess its impacts, they will inevitably be severe. They will inevitably cause extinctions, human and other species illness, and the loss of Indigenous cultures and settlements in the far North. To my knowledge, we have never seen such events at such a scale in recorded human history.

PG: Early days of hydro-dams being dismantled and rivers being freed. Is it good news for salmon, Indigenous Peoples?

PB: Yes, of course, it is great news. Rivers are the lifeblood for all of us, and especially for salmon and Indigenous river tribes – all the tribes in the coastal Pacific Northwest are salmon people. An elder of the Lower Elwha Tribe, whom I met one evening at a student conference, spoke to me about the degree to which his people could breathe again, with the river running free. I also feel that way. But for those who have taken care of these lands for millennia, the removal of dams allows immense healing to be done from many wounds of land theft, genocide, and cultural and economic wounds.

I am lucky to live on the only river – the Skagit River, which runs from highlands in Canada down through the Cascade Mountains to an estuary at Fir Island, Washington – with all five salmon species – Chinook, coho, pink, sockeye, and chum. It’s the only river in Washington State with healthy populations of all five, and one of only a few watersheds in the entire continental USA. Cutting off these rivers with dams is not only a cultural affront and obscenity, it’s also, of course, an ecological obscenity with many consequences for river and ocean fauna and flora. Among these consequences is the endangerment of predators like orcas, Southern Resident Killer Whales, which are culturally, ecologically, and economically important to virtually all people in our region.

PG: Deforestation of boreal forests/ old growth (whatever is left) goes on relentlessly? To top it all – fossil fuel extraction. Aren’t these recipes for irreversible disaster?

PB: Yes. A sure-shot recipe. And yes, irreversible on a human timescale. Perhaps not on an aeon timescale, but we are leaving a gravely denuded, abused, and depleted world crying out from our abuse. Surely we can learn better from our horrendous mistakes of the last two centuries of western individualism, extraction, profiteering, domination, and entitlement.

PG: Indiscriminate use of glyphosate and aggressive firefighting – ignoring Indigenous practices. Where are we headed?

PB: The USA is particularly corrupt in this way. I say corrupt because it’s not just ignorant management that leads people to use glyphosate or to prioritize timberlands; it’s the inevitable consequence of deliberate profiteering, corruption of policymakers, and an extractive, entitlement mentality. Most of us are by now completely aware of how horrific this corruption is. The trouble is, unlike many African, Asian, and European countries, this corruption in the USA is alarmingly quite legal. And, of course, those who benefit from the system are finding cruel and ridiculous ways to protect their interests.

“The trouble is, unlike many African, Asian, and European countries, this corruption in the USA is alarmingly quite legal.”

As I sometimes say about our path forward: the road is short (to 2030 and 2050), the hill is steep, the odds are long, and the vested interests have sharp teeth and claws. But we have no choice but to face them down, or risk annihilation for our own species and literally millions of others.

PG: What is your vision for the Cascadia bio-region? How could it be replicated in other unique bio-regions?

PB: I am happy to say that many people in the Cascadia bioregion share my vision – of a kinder, wiser, more humble, much more collaborative and sustainable society which has learned from its mistakes and lives much more lightly. In this vision, which isn’t a utopia, but certainly has retreated from its headlong hurdle towards dystopia, people with historical or recent wealth – and we have thousands in our area, especially in Seattle – have joined those few millionaires and billionaires who actually are leading change.

We will have a highly democratic and much more egalitarian style of governance, rooted in the progressive ideals that this region is known for but learning to listen to those of more conservative mindsets. We will have learned to work in a unifying way to repair our watersheds, forests, and farmlands. It will be a slow process, and there will be many stresses, especially from those who resist change and wish to dominate the economy. But our vision is regenerative, collaborative, and nourishing, and we believe enough people will come to join us in time.

PG: Grateful thanks for these candid insights, Phoebe. My best wishes for your sense of optimism despite all that is happening around, as of now.