Hurricanes, Nature Funding, & Pygmy Hippos

Today, rather than interviewing a WWF expert in-dept on a specific topic, we’re trying something new. Seth will be joined by Hayley Lawton from WWF’s social media team for something we’re calling: Headlines & Trendlines. You’ll hear Seth and Hayley briefly summarize some recent news articles and talk about what they mean for climate and nature.

This week they discuss two big issues that are driving headlines: this year’s devastating hurricane season, and the ongoing UN biodiversity conference. They also touch on the recent pygmy hippo craze that had everyone on Earth talking about baby Moo Deng.

Links for More Info:
New York Times, A Tale of Two Hurricanes Finds More That Differs Than Is the Same: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/us/hurricane-milton-helene-florida-north-carolina.html

Vox, We need $700 billion to save nature: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/378249/cop16-biodiversity-finance-gap-seven-hundred-billion

WWF pygmy hippo facts: https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/why-are-pygmy-hippos-so-small-and-6-other-pygmy-hippo-facts

TRANSCRIPT:

Seth Larson: Welcome to Nature Breaking a World Wildlife Fund podcast focused on news and trends affecting our natural world and the people and species who call it home. I'm Seth Larson, and today we're going to try a slightly new format for our show. Usually I interview an expert from WWF to ask about a trending topic or an important initiative, and we'll definitely be doing a lot more of those episodes in the future. But today we're going to keep it a little looser.

I'll be joined by my colleague Hayley Lawton from WWF's social media team for something we're calling Headlines & Trendlines. This is where Hayley and I are going to summarize some recent news articles and talk about what they mean for climate and nature. We aren't necessarily experts on these topics, so we won't get all the way into the scientific or technical questions the articles might raise. But we both have years of experience working at a conservation NGO, so we'll give you an insider's perspective of what it all means. This week, we'll be talking about two big issues that are at the front of our minds: this year's devastating hurricane season and the ongoing UN biodiversity conference, which just kicked off in Cali, Colombia. We'll also touch on the recent pygmy hippo craze that had everyone on earth talking about baby Moo Deng. Before we get started, let me put in a quick plug to please subscribe to this show if you haven't already.

We've had some great engagement and feedback on recent episodes, but right now, most of the people listening to or watching this show are not subscribed. Subscribing to the show is free and it ensures that you'll never miss an episode. And subscriber growth is also a key metric that helps us track our success.

So please, if you've enjoyed Nature Breaking, take a moment to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to find us. Thank you for listening. And now let me bring in my cohost for today, Hayley Lawton.

All right. Hey, Hayley. Thanks for joining Nature Breaking.

Hayley Lawton: Hi, Seth. Thanks for having me today.

Seth Larson: I'm really glad to have you here as well. And you know, before we get into more serious topics, since this is your first time on the show, I got to ask you to tell our listeners a little about yourself. Where are you, what's your background and how long have you been at WWF?

Hayley Lawton: Yes, of course. So hi everyone. My name is Hayley Lawton. I am, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and that's where I currently still reside. I'm on the social media team here at WWF doing a lot of video creation, but my background is actually in broadcast journalism and I've been at WWF for three years now,

Seth Larson: That's awesome. What? How long did you work in broadcast journalism before you came here?

Hayley Lawton: it was probably a, about a year. Yeah. Right.

Seth Larson: Um, well, I'm, I'm really happy to have you joining the show today. And this is hopefully going to be a recurring thing that we'll do from time to time. Um, you know, for listeners, uh, I've had the chance to work a lot with Hayley behind the scenes on this podcast over the last year or so. Hayley, you've been a great partner as we've launched this show on YouTube and, uh, helping with the visual elements and, and a lot of those strips strategy that went into that. So it's awesome to have you on screen and on mic, uh, instead of just working behind the scenes and over email. So, as I mentioned in my intro, the goal with this new Headlines & Trendlines format is to periodically do shorter and more timely episodes of the podcast. And our thought there is we've seen that episodes tied to breaking news or hot topics tend to get the most engagement from our audience, right?

So this is hopefully a way to give folks more of what they want. And when we do this, we're going to try to use news articles as a jumping off point for our discussion. And today we're going to start with a piece from the New York Times that chronicled the two recent hurricanes that impacted areas of Florida and Appalachia.

So Hayley, I'm going to let you take it from here and tell us more about that.

Hayley Lawton: All right, so this first article comes from the New York Times and the headline reads, "A Tale of Two Hurricanes Finds More That Differs Than Is the Same." This ran on October 13th and was co-written by Audra D. S. Birch, Eduardo Medina, and Kate Selig. Here are a few excerpts. "Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26, then plowed through the south, including North Carolina.

"Hurricane Milton made landfall on October 9 on the west coast of Florida. The two hurricanes tell a tale of how storms made more powerful by climate change can devastate regions with distinct topography and varying levels of experience with hurricanes. They can leave behind discrepant kinds of damage and dictate different trajectories of recovery."

Seth Larson: Yeah, and the story goes on from there to point out some different ways that each region was affected by those two storms. And it goes on to note the following:

"Western North Carolina was stunned by the catastrophic rainfall received from Helene only days after a slow-moving rainstorm had passed through, drenching the ground in rivers. The fast-rising floods that resulted washed away entire neighborhoods and caught communities off guard, and the region's recovery has been slowed by the daunting mountain terrain downed trees and remote locations. In Florida, the story continues, Milton pummeled coastal and island communities, but it spared the state's most densely populated regions. It also spawned a tornado outbreak."

Now, Hayley, we've talked a lot on this podcast about how climate change is making extreme weather events like this more frequent. What were you thinking about as you saw these events play out in real time?

Hayley Lawton: Well, the first thing that I thought about initially were the people. Living in Houston, I've personally experienced, um, hurricanes and intense storms, and I know how hard they can be. You don't know how hard they'll hit, how long they will last, or even if you'll have power the next day. And during Harvey, luckily the house I was living at the time didn't have any damage really, but a lot of my family members didn't have homes to go back to because of how bad the storm was.

So I know how difficult that can be, and my heart is truly with everyone who was affected because that's, that's really difficult.

Seth Larson: Yeah. I'm so glad you said that. And I think we can say on behalf of WWF, like our hearts go out to all the people affected by these, these most recent storms. It's really terrible stuff. Um, I, I haven't really experienced any hurricane disasters in my life. I lived in Rhode Island when hurricane Bob hit in the early nineties, but, um, as it happened I was very young, first of all, and, uh, my family had a trip to Washington, DC planned for that week when... so I was there when the hurricane hit, but the real impact was the loss of power and people were without power and resources for like a week after the storm. And I, I just lucked out that I was taking this trip to DC with my family. So I was gone for most of that. And the power was on by the time we got home. I do remember, uh, Hurricane Sandy really impacted the area where I grew up in 2012. I was, I was living in DC by then. Um, but I was working for an elected official from Rhode Island and I got to tour, um, some of the damage after the fact with him and it was just something I'll never forget.

I mean, this stuff, it really drives home the power of nature, um, and how damaging it can be. So thank you for sharing those reflections. You know, bringing this back to the work we do together at WWF, reading that article also made me think about some of the things I talked about with Stephanie Roe, uh, our lead climate scientist at WWF, when she was on this show back in July. She was talking about all the climate records being broken this year, and she said, and I'll, I'll quote her: "Climate change will impact every single human, animal, plant and ecosystem on the planet. It's a super pervasive challenge that we have on our hands and the records we keep breaking on temperatures on extreme events, on economic damage and die offs of ecosystems and species, they're all alarm bells that we need to listen to. But we also have a lot more agency than we think to be able to push for global solutions."

To me, that's maybe a hopeful note to sound, uh, in the wake of, of all this disaster and tragedy, because I think we all understandably feel hopeless in the face of something like a hurricane. And certainly none of us is going to pull a level, a single lever and prevent the next storm from happening. But there are steps that we can take to make a difference, right?

We can purchase more sustainable products, advocate with our elected officials for policies that reduce the use of fossil fuels and promote renewable energy. There's a lot of things that we can do in our own lives that make a difference in, in those small actions can add up, right?

Hayley Lawton: Yeah, you're right, Seth. It really starts with us to help make a change for our planet.

But now I'm going to turn our focus to another topic. And that's the UN biodiversity conference that's happening right now in Colombia, which is also known as COP16.

And you covered this in your last episode, Seth. but I wanted to highlight an article specifically that came out after your episode that dove a little deeper into one specific challenge on negotiators that they're facing at this conference. And that's about finance. This article is titled, "We need $700 billion to save nature."

It's by Benji Jones at Vox. And the article reads in part: "If there's one number worth paying attention to in the fight to protect nature, it's this: $700 billion. That's the sum in US dollars that experts say we need each year in addition to more than $100 billion dollars the world is already spending to stop the decline of animals and ecosystems and all the services they provide, from creating clean water to pollinating commercial crops."

Seth, I have to be honest, when I read this initially, the first thing that came to mind was: this is a lot of money,

Seth Larson: Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong. $700 billion is a pretty big number. Um, I also think it's important to put that in perspective though. That's a global figure. Um, and I, I looked this up before we started recording the, the US government's annual budget is something like $6.7 trillion. Um, so. That gives it a little perspective.

And, you know, as you read, we're, we're not talking about sort of nice to have stuff here. We're talking about essential clean water, clean air, the basics of life. Um, so in that context, I feel like $700 billion dollars makes a lot more sense. And I like this article because it broke down that number in a really clear way.

I should say full disclosure, Benji, the reporter, uh, he interviewed one of WWF's experts for this article and I helped set that interview up. Um, so I had sort of a backend, uh, uh, seat to see how the story came together. But I still found the article to be really illuminating and the $700 billion, it breaks down like this: $500 billion, by far the biggest portion, would come from phasing out or repurposing harmful subsidies. These are subsidies that mostly apply to the agricultural sector for things like making farms more sustainable. So right now there's a lot of subsidies that encourage farmers to act unsustainably or to use unsustainable practices.

And if we could just flip that and have those subsidies incentivize sustainable practices. It would go a long way. The other $200 billion would come from increasing foreign aid flows from wealthy nations to developing nations, boosting domestic budgets for conservation in countries, and encouraging funding from companies as well to help with conservation work.

Hayley Lawton: right? And so Seth, we're hoping that countries and companies at COP16 will make new commitments to help close the funding gap, right?

Seth Larson: Yeah, that's, that's basically my understanding. And in particular at WWF, we're advocating for developed countries to fulfill a pledge they made in 2022 to make $20 billion available every year to help developing nations implement conservation projects. And that that $20 billion is a subset of the $200 billion I mentioned earlier, and the most recent public reporting before COP16 began indicated that only a little more than $15 billion had been secured.

So there's a gap of about $5 billion dollars per year that needs to be closed there, and we're hoping to see that happen as COP16 closes out, um. any final thoughts or reactions on this story?

Hayley Lawton: I think you covered this one pretty well, Seth.

Seth Larson: So before I let you go, I wanted to close this episode on a little bit of a lighter note, and we've got to talk about this one last thing. The internet completely blew up a few weeks ago over a baby pygmy hippo at a Thailand zoo named Moo Deng. The hippo even made a fictional appearance on Saturday Night Live. One of our WWF colleagues was recently in Thailand and just so happened to visit Moo Deng and snap a few photos. So, we thought it would be fun to flash those photos on the screen here as you just read us some quick baby pygmy hippo facts, Hayley.

Hayley Lawton: Yeah. So pygmy hippos are found only in West Africa. Most live in Liberia, with smaller populations in a few other countries. Fewer than 2,500 individuals are thought to exist in the wild. The species has been greatly impacted by deforestation from logging, mining and agricultural expansion, and from poaching. Adult pygmy hippos are about one tenth the size of a standard size hippo, which is still pretty big. That's about the size of a lion. And as we all saw with Moo Deng, pygmy hippos are very shiny. That’s because they have tiny mucus glands on their skin that excrete a pink goo, keeping them hydrated and protected from the sun.

Seth Larson: Yeah, they're really interesting little creatures. Moo Deng is completely adorable and I, I absolutely understand why she created such an internet firestorm. Um, it was kind of neat to see that play out. And, uh, and so thank you for sharing those facts with us. Uh, all those facts you just read are actually available on WWF's website. So we'll link to those in our show notes in case folks want to go read a little more about baby pygmy hippos. Um, Hayley, I think we can call this a wrap for today, but I really want to thank you for doing this with me and let's do it again sometime, right?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Seth. I really look forward to doing this again sometime. All right. Sounds like a plan. All right, that's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks for listening to this first edition of Headlines & Trendlines on Nature Breaking. Thanks also to Hayley Lawton for making it possible. We'll keep doing these now and then when we have new stories to react to. And please, if there's a story or a topic that you'd like to hear us cover in the future, let us know.

You can email us at [email protected], and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your messages there. For now have a great day. And together, let's keep building a more sustainable future.