Biologist and researcher on climate change and biodiversity at the CSIC, Fernando Valladares appears friendly and somewhat fragile after having overcome a serious illness, but that does not diminish his involvement in the fight to preserve nature, which earned him the Pura Vida award of MUY INTERESTING.
Our interviewee begins bluntly: “The consequences of decades of confronting nature and exploiting its resources in an unsustainable way, at the cost of extinguishing species and degrading ecosystems, are causing crises that compromise the health and future of humanity. The covid-19 pandemic or climate change are chilling examples of the effects of a socio-economic model that confronts nature instead of allying with it. ” Listening to Fernando Valladares talk about biodiversity and ecosystems with so much knowledge and affection is like reconnecting with nature. Those of us who are older let ourselves be carried away to the cathodic television in which our dear Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, Carl Sagan or Jacques Cousteau appeared, when everything seemed to be going well and we thought that the human being, the oceans and the cosmos would end up understanding each other .
Thirty or forty years later, the climate is out of control, the impact of anthropogenic global change – that caused by man – reaches almost every corner of the planet and we are immersed in the sixth great mass extinction. However, there are scientists like Valladares who bring us hope. We see this biologist and CSIC researcher on television, we hear him on radio stations or at the foot of a demonstration of rebels for life, with a megaphone, or at the doors of his laboratory, located in the National Museum of Natural Sciences from Madrid. We can also imagine him walking, observing, collecting data among the mists of the Upper Tagus forests, with the patience and lucidity of the field researcher, relating the behaviors of the species and their environment, sharing ideas about the impact of climate change on ecosystems. subjected to the stress that this causes them.
When did Valladares have a passion for observing nature? From a very young age he was already captivated. Remember that with seven or eight years, in the summers, he liked to look for and align snail shells by their color gradation, from the most melanistic to the most albino. This was already in essence the idea of the variability of evolution. The biologist comments that his grandmother loved roses and flowers. “And there I was, awash in fragrances and with pollen on my nose,” he recalls.
On the way from EGB to BUP, from basic education to high school, he bought a biology book on Madrid’s Cuesta de Moyano and was reading it during the holidays. It turned out that when the course started it was the text recommended by the teacher of the subject, and Fernando got very good grades, because he already knew it. And then another fundamental wave came to him: “Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente not only made us change our gaze and discovered the natural world for millions of Spaniards: he influenced children and young people so much that many decided to study biology, and that is how the first wave of scientific vocations that is remembered in the country. My grandfather was a follower of Rodríguez de la Fuente from the beginning. With Planeta azul he reunited the family, turned on the TV and told everyone to be quiet; there was a deathly silence and we all looked at what was playing that day ”.
Already finishing the Biology degree with very good grades, he was tempted by the most striking and adventurous parts, such as the study of the jaguar or exotic birds in Peru, but his professor Joaquín Gosalves guided him towards a more scientific environment and inclined him to a future rigorous research profession. Valladares started with his thesis in lichenology and joined a research group that was halfway between the UCM and the CSIC. The lichens also took him four times to Antarctica later. But his encounter with climate change came earlier. It begins with a scientific trip to California while doing a doctorate at the University of California at Davis. Fernando recalls that “the opportunity arose to go to the tropics with the Smithsonian Institute to study the operation of plants in situations of thermal and water stress, to see how they deal with extreme conditions.”
During his years in California, he began to research an endemic shrub, Heteromeles arbutifolia , from which he learned relevant things to understand the relationship between biodiversity and climate change. Fernando published several articles on the issue, including the one entitled “Drought can be more critical in the shade than in the sun: a field study of carbon gain and photoinhibition in a California shrub during a dry El Niño year ”. In his research in the 1990s, he collected an extraordinary set of key data to better understand the impact of climate change and its relationship to global change, a field in which he is an expert.
An extreme climate ecosystem
Upon returning from California, Valladares began a love affair with the Upper Tagus territories: “It has been my headquarters since 2004, my main scientific landing.” He investigates thoroughly in the Alcolea del Pinar / Molina de Aragón area, in the province of Guadalajara. It is an extensive ecosystem of dry and cold forests, subjected to stress. It is a special place, with an extreme climate, ideal to test your theories, obtain data and observe the impact of climate change in Spain, surrounded by that rugged nature that often serves as the setting for your long runs as a runner in the open air. . A beautiful natural space of great ecological and geological importance, crossed by the Tagus and other rivers, such as the Gallo and the Arandilla. The Alto Tajo is an emerald snake, a crystalline green over which electric blue dragonflies fly overhead. Walls of sandstone and conglomerates rush over the Gallo River and take on a fiery glow at sunset. Shoemakers scamper on the icy surface of the river. The sharp, sharp ocher strata of ancient sandstones rise over the course of the Arandilla. The river jumps, every so often, in a cascade of tuffs, small walls that divide it into pools, with branches and mosses petrified in calcium carbonate.
In his journeys through the Alto Tajo, Valladares becomes aware that there is a lack of data from the interior of the peninsula. Holm oaks, junipers, Pinus sylvestris , are very well parameterized in other places, but the physiological information of these species cannot be extrapolated to an indoor ecosystem. To measure photosynthesis in cold forests, the Alto Tajo area is ideal, with its populations of holm oaks, junipers, pines, gall oaks and linden trees. Valladares began to study whether they turned out to be carbon sinks or emitters and changed the existing perception: “These forests refine their commitments against heat and drought, cold and drought, and establish physiological differentiations . In this climate of the Iberian system they fine-tune their yield and growth speed, the thermal contrasts imply less productivity ”. There, certain genetic changes take place in populations so that the carbon balance is finally net, changes that balance emissions, species that live at the limit of productivity, in extreme weather, and grow very slowly due to the accumulation of stress. “We researchers also lived in these extreme conditions, Cola Cao froze inside the thermos,” he laughs.
In this environment, Valladares is acquiring a panoramic vision, begins to see the connections of ecology and climate, perceives how everything is related and in movement, nature, the socioeconomic aspect and the human. By understanding climate change as the essential dynamizing part of global change, he understands the crisis. “ In the media, reality is fragmented. It is simplified, the economic crisis, the health crisis, the energy crisis are discussed separately, but everything is connected ” . To contrast what is important, the biologist investigates the questions and conclusions posed by a wide audience, the non-expert. It is about finding “what interests your grandmother”, of perceiving what attracts people on the street. In a high school, a fifteen-year-old student tells him that they study economics as a closed system. “This is done just to simplify the study. The economy is an open system, and it has an ecological leg ”. For Valladares, the kids come from a simplifying apprenticeship, with a baggage that must be removed. It is a context that must be taken into account.
To understand environmental crises, one must understand the great crisis of the socioeconomic system that has brought these global problems to humanity. Some figures warn us of the capacity we have to affect all its processes: “We and domestic animals represent 98% of the world’s mammalian mass, when a few centuries ago we were only 2%. 40% of the Earth’s surface is artificially modified into urban, suburban and agricultural . Health has gone from being related to natural causes, such as infectious diseases, which cause death, to being affected by the environmental dimension produced by humans: “More than 80% of childhood cancers are of environmental origin, traditional medicine only It may therefore act on the other remaining 20%. Our health will depend more and more on environmental specialists ”, remarks Valladares.
More and more experts consider that we have less than a decade left to reverse the climate crisis, while other scientists believe that we have already passed a series of points of no return and that it is not possible to reverse anthropogenic climate change or stop the worst impacts . Valladares is concerned about this issue, but affirms that “we are not yet clear if we are on time or not. More analysis is needed, we are at the limit, and the data can tell you one thing now and another in a year. The numbers tell different stories depending on the analysis, and sometimes there are antithetical results. ” He believes that we are still on time but that if planetary limits are exceeded, the consequences will be very serious, “perhaps reversible, but it will cost much more time and it will be much harder to return to the previous state.” Valladares calls it hysteresis: if you cross a red line, a non-linear change appears. Tipping points (planetary limits of climate and environmental balance) are crossed.
This biologist believes that we have passed the stability of some climatic processes. “We have crossed red lines, planetary boundaries. It is true that things are not entirely final, but it becomes very slow and expensive to recover. It takes a few decades to alter and destroy, but returning to the starting position requires centuries of effort ”. And he thinks that putting a certain date on a certain event is going beyond the scientific method : “In crisis sciences, rare is the situation in which you have all the knowledge, the data to be able to establish forecasts. It is just a forecast based on what you see can happen. Then you consider a personal position and you have to explain it. It is not a scientific approach, because data is lacking, but in a moment of crisis you make a consideration, a precautionary recommendation. For example, the relationship between extreme events in intensity and frequency, such as hurricanes or droughts, with climate change is now firmly established. At the time it was already thought that this was the case, but data was lacking, and then a precautionary recommendation was made until the direct connection was established ”.
Meanwhile, and given what we already know, the possibility of approaching a tough but intelligent attitude is pointed out: deep adaptation. Valladares believes that “this is a matter of personal options, based on the recognition of what is already happening or what is very imminent and evident.” He gives the example of the coasts: “ Really, if we insist on rebuilding the promenades, we are not accepting reality. Accepting is preparing, fitting reality. Changing it is going to take a while; In the best of cases, we are going to have to live for a time in this situation, which we do not like; that is anticipation, not resignation. If you see coming that you are going to have water up to your neck, the sooner you start preparing, the more options we will have to choose from, the more intermediate conditions may arise. For example, net decarbonisation is essential to obtain it as soon as possible, as some of the new environmental and climate movements like Extinction Rebellion or Fridays For Future claim ”.
We have heard many times in recent months our interviewee say that “we had the vaccine against this pandemic and we have loaded it. Against this pandemic and against many others: it was called nature in good condition ”. On the environmental conditions that have given rise to a long-announced zoonotic pandemic such as covid-19, new and old unacceptable human activities come together: wet markets, illegal species trafficking, deforestation and globalization. All these activities, following Valladares’ discourse, increase the possibilities of the spread of pathogens. These follow the progress of our environmental destruction. Infectious diseases follow tropical degradation. We destroy nature in the tropics. Before, there had been a certain natural barrier, but our technology and capabilities have already allowed us to enter and destroy tropical forests and establish intensive agricultural and livestock operations where previously there was only jungle. And yes, “we had the vaccine and we loaded it.” Currently the risk of emerging infections is increasing in tropical regions, in parallel with their deterioration. Southeast Asia, where the origin of covid-19 is found, was postulated as having a special zoonosis risk more than three years ago. Nature defends us from pandemics through its biodiversity and natural balance. Once we break these, we end that protective barrier and pandemic zoonoses arrive. “It’s terrible, but it’s the truth,” concludes the expert.
Valladares has never been bored in his life. You can run for hours on the frozen glaciers of Iceland or the Alps, and publish scientific articles in the magazines Nature or Science . You can appear on television or radio to explain climate change, link lectures at five Spanish universities to which you travel by bicycle to encourage critical thinking, or coordinate a summer course on the Anthropocene. In addition to being a scientist and popularizer, Valladares has an activist facet and defends the popularization-activism binomial for scientists who research global change. He comments that “the urgency of the action proposed by environmental activism is very positive. Since 2019, above all, there has been a propensity among scientists to achieve transdisciplinarity and seek complementary perspectives. This has grown in parallel with activism and it is no accident. We have reached the point where society is against the ropes: there is a collective vibration that occurs in unison ”.
The activism movement for life Extinction Rebellion has quoted Valladares on many occasions, who intervened in the Spanish Parliament with these words: “Climate change kills. This year on the order of a quarter of a million people will die directly, but the figure rises to tens of millions if we include indirect causes ”. The biologist was called in September 2020 to the Climate Commission of the Congress of Deputies in relation to the processing of the climate change law. It was proposed to express to the parliamentarians a part of evidence and a part of urgency, combined: “ I was left with a bittersweet feeling, after six months that have already passed, the alibi of delaying the publication of the law has been generated. for almost eight hundred amendments. It is a clear example of the trees that do not let you see the forest. The law, of course, is uncomfortable for everyone. Climate change is bad news for everyone and it will have uncomfortable consequences. We must not wait for the circumstances to become comfortable, it will not happen, we must speed up and better with law, even if it lacks ambition, a climate change law is better than a climate change without law ”.
Our protagonist has plans in several directions, to publish a book on global change, to act as a scientist and as a citizen. In particular, it says: “ I am very excited about the mechanisms of direct democracy, such as citizen assemblies, and that they serve to stimulate and bring out new proposals regarding the crisis we are experiencing with global change. Recommendations that become legislative initiatives. It is necessary that the assembly of the climate starts already in Spain. It is not only science that has the solution, there are many sciences, harder and softer, colder and less, and many solutions. There is no single numerical solution, there are anthropological and sociological solutions, a rich mix, different views. For a citizen assembly to be alive, a certain magic has to be produced between different knowledge and approaches and the specialists have to connect with ordinary people. Scientific data must be combined with the times required by the population. Make everyone’s needs and everyone’s reasons compatible ”.
While looking towards his laboratory, Valladares leaves us one last thought: “The R that we lack is to recover what has already worked, ancestral knowledge, to recover the validity of Greek thought, to rescue knowledge that is alive in religions, in the oral tradition of some peoples, all this generates that shared cultural trust. Let’s look generously at all that knowledge. Knowledge that unites us all a little and that generates confidence. It is what we need ”, he concludes.
