The Case for Conservation Podcast

Synthetic biology, the engineering of life at the genetic level, is advancing at pace. Much of the public conversation fixates on de-extinction and charismatic creatures like woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and moas, but is that really what matters in this new world we are looking at? And while we debate whether these technologies should be applied to the natural world at all, massive investment in human medicine and agriculture is already releasing genetically modified organisms into open systems, including soils, freshwater, oceans, and even our own bodies. Synthetic biology also raises difficult questions about who benefits, who bears the costs, and what it means when private intellectual property becomes embedded in the genome of an endangered species.
To explore all of this, I spoke with returning guest on the show Kent Redford, a conservation scientist who has spent well over a decade trying to bring synthetic biology to the attention of conservationists. We discuss the blurry line between genetic engineering and synthetic biology, the promise and peril of engineered gene drives, and why he believes the field's obsession with de-extinction is largely a waste of time. Kent also makes a deeper, more unsettling argument: that conservation is gripped by a kind of "Holocene hubris," still trying to restore a past that is already slipping away.
Links to resources
Strange Natures: Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology - Kent's book on synthetic biology in conservation
Synthetic soil crusts against green-desert transitions - 2021 article by Solé and co-authors 
Beneficial Microorganisms for Corals (BMC): Proposed Mechanisms for Coral Health and Resilience - 2017 artilce by Peixoto and co-authors
Visit www.case4conservation.com

Collaboration is one of the most widely accepted ideas in environmental governance. When faced with a complex problem, the instinct is almost always to bring stakeholders together and work toward a shared solution. When that process fails the response is often to “collaborate harder”. But what if that instinct is sometimes counterproductive? What if the sheer number of collaborative initiatives is stretching participants so thin that none of them achieve very much? And what if the conflicts that collaboration is supposed to resolve are actually being deepened by the process itself?
To explore these questions, I spoke with previous guest Örjan Bodin, Professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. Örjan's research examines how networks of actors collaborate — or fail to collaborate — around environmental problems, and what determines whether those efforts lead to meaningful outcomes. We discuss why collaboration is not always the best response to every problem, how conflict and cooperation coexist, the role of power imbalances in shaping outcomes, why trust takes far longer to build than most initiatives allow for, and whether the small, incremental wins that feel unsatisfying might actually be the best path to lasting progress.
Links to resources
Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change - 2010 Ostrom article about the benefits of small initial gains.
A population ecology of network domains. Public Management Review - 2023 article on the issue of ever-increasing number of collaborative venues.
Reconciling Conflict and Cooperation in Environmental Governance: A Social Network Perspective - 2020 article by Örjan and others on the interplay between conflict and collaboration, and its (partial) separation in scholarly work on environmental governance.
Collaborative environmental governance: Achieving collective action in social-ecological systems - 2017 article by Örjan in Science.
The Environmental Performance of Participatory and Collaborative Governance: A Framework of Causal Mechanisms - 2018 article by Newig et al.
Visit www.case4conservation.com

The relationship between science, policy, and society is often framed as a search for objective answers. In reality, it is shaped by partial perspectives and competing forms of knowledge. Why do certain perspectives dominate? Why is there such a persistent expectation that science can deliver answers to fundamentally political questions? And how do these dynamics affect trust in expertise?
To explore these questions, I spoke with Mark Neff, Professor at the College of the Environment at Western Washington University. Mark’s work sits at the intersection of environmental policy, science policy, and science and technology studies, focusing on how societies organize and use scientific knowledge in decision-making. We discuss the limits of scientific authority in a democracy, the tensions between different forms of knowledge, the risks of claiming certainty, and why acknowledging uncertainty may be essential to restore trust in science and policy.
Link to resources
De-Facto Science Policy in the Making How Scientists Shape Science Policy and Why it Matters - A 2013 (but still relevant) paper co-authored by Mark
Mark is currently working on a book introducing some of the ideas we discuss. Link to details will be added here once it is available.
Visit www.case4conservation.com

Biodiversity loss is an ongoing challenge, but some of the language we use to describe it may be on shakier ground than we realize. Are we really living through a “sixth mass extinction”? What does that phrase technically imply, and how well is it supported by the data? And what about climate change: how much species-level extinction can credibly be attributed to warming so far, and how do you attribute causes when multiple threats interact?
To explore these questions, I spoke with John Wiens, an ecologist at the University of Arizona whose work focuses on extinction rates and climate-driven range losses. We discuss what the evidence suggests about acceleration (or the lack thereof) in extinction in recent decades, why documented extinctions have been concentrated on islands and in freshwater systems, and how climate change is expected to reshape extinction risk through mechanisms like heat extremes, shifting range limits, and disease dynamics. The thread running through it all is credibility and ambition: how to communicate urgency without overclaiming, and why a stronger conservation goal is not “avoiding a mass extinction,” but preventing extinctions wherever we still can.
Links to resources
Future threats to biodiversity and pathways to their prevention - The 2017 Tilman et al. article that John referred to in our discussion
Questioning the sixth mass extinction - A 2025 article by John and colleague
Visit www.case4conservation.com

This episode does not argue against renewable energy—renewables are essential to decarbonization—but it does ask what the transition looks like when you account for materials, extraction, and infrastructure.
The clean energy transition is often framed as a straightforward swap: renewables replace fossil fuels, emissions fall, problem solved. But beneath that story sits a harder set of questions. How material-intensive is a renewables-led grid, really? What happens when you account for the steel, concrete, and critical minerals that make wind, solar, and battery storage possible? And if mining expands dramatically to enable decarbonization, what are the environmental and social trade-offs?
To explore these questions, I spoke with Saleem Ali, a systems scientist and industrial ecologist at the University of Delaware who studies the “materials–energy nexus”—the idea that energy systems are constrained not only by fuels and emissions, but by infrastructure, extraction, and supply chains. We talk about why wind and solar can be surprisingly material-heavy up front, how storage options like pumped hydro compare with large battery farms, why nuclear and biofuels remain part of the conversation, and what a more pragmatic approach looks like when every option carries trade-offs.
Links to Resources
The fight over minerals for green energy — and a better way forward - Saleem's 2024 TED Talk
Visit www.case4conservation.com