What a nun can teach a scientist about ecology | Victoria Gill

Transcriber: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Camille Martínez

OK, I would like to introduce all of you beautiful, curious-minded people

to my favorite animal in the world.

This is the Peter Pan of the amphibian world.

It's an axolotl.

It's a type of salamander,

but it never fully grows up and climbs out of the water

like other salamanders do.

And this little guy has X-Man-style powers, right?

So if it loses any limb,

it can just completely regenerate.

It's amazing.

And, I mean, look at it -- it's got a face with a permanent smile.

(Laughter)

It's framed by feathery gills.

It's just ... how could you not love that?

This particular type of axolotl, a very close relative,

is known as an achoque.

It is equally as cute,

and it lives in just one place in a lake in the north of Mexico.

It's called Lake Pátzcuaro,

and as you can see,

it is stunningly beautiful.

But unfortunately, it's been so overfished and so badly polluted

that the achoque is dying out altogether.

And this is something that's a scenario that's playing out all over the world.

We're living through an extinction crisis,

and species are particularly vulnerable when they're evolutionarily tailored

to just one little niche or maybe one lake.

But this is TED, right?

So this is where I give you the big idea, the big solution.

So how do you save one special weird species from going extinct?

Well, the answer, at least my answer,

isn't a grand technological intervention.

It's actually really simple.

It's that you find people who know all about this animal

and you ask them and you listen to them

and you work with them, if they're up for that.

So I want to tell you about how I've seen that in science,

and in conservation in particular,

if scientists don't team up with local people

who have really valuable knowledge

but a practical wisdom that's not going to be published in any academic journal,

they can really miss the point.

Scientists and science as an enterprise can fall at the first hurdle

if it rushes in knowing that it's the experts that know best.

But when scientists shake off those academic constraints

and really look to people who have a totally different

but really important perspective on what they're trying to do,

it can genuinely save the world,

one wonderfully weird amphibian at a time.

So, in the case of the achoque,

these are the people you need on your team.

(Laughter)

These are the Sisters of the Immaculate Health.

They are nuns who have a convent in Pátzcuaro, they live in Pátzcuaro,

and they have a shared history with the achoque.

And it is so mind-bogglingly wonderful

that it drew me all the way there to make an audio documentary about them,

and I even have the unflattering selfie

to prove it.

There is a room at the center of their convent, though,

that looks like this.

It's very strange.

It's lined with all these tanks full of fresh water

and hundreds of achoques.

And that's because this creature, because of its regenerative abilities,

it's believed has healing powers if you consume it.

So the sisters actually make and sell a medicine using achoques.

I bought a bottle of it.

So this is it.

It tastes a bit like honey,

but the sisters reckon it is good

for all kinds of particularly respiratory ailments.

So I just want you to have a listen, if you will, to a clip of Sister Ofelia.

(Audio) Sister Ofelia: (speaks in Spanish)

(Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) Our convent was founded by Dominican nuns

here in Pátzcuaro in 1747.

Sometime after that,

our sisters started to make the achoque syrup.

We didn't discover the properties of the achoque.

That was the original people from around here, since ancient times.

But we then started to make the syrup, too.

The locals knew that,

and they came to offer us the animals.

(Audio) Victoria Gill: I see.

So the achoques are part of making that syrup.

What does the syrup treat, and what is it for?

(Audio) SO: (speaks in Spanish)

(Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) It's good for coughs, asthma,

bronchitis, the lungs and back pain.

(Audio) VG: And so you've harnessed that power

in a syrup, in a medicine.

Can you tell me how it's made?

You're shaking your head and smiling. (Laughter)

VG: Yeah, they're not up for sharing the centuries-old secret recipe.

(Laughter)

But the decline in the achoque

actually nearly put a halt to that medicine production altogether,

which is why the sisters started this.

It's the world's first achoque farm.

All they wanted was a healthy, sustainable population

so that they could continue to make that medicine,

but what they created at the same time

was a captive breeding program for a critically endangered species.

And fast forward a few years,

and these scientists that you can see in this picture

from Chester Zoo all the way over the in UK,

not far from where I live,

and from Michoacana University in Morelia in Mexico

have persuaded the sisters -- it took years of careful diplomacy --

to join them in a research partnership.

So the nuns show the biologists

how you rear perfectly healthy, very robust Pátzcuaro achoques,

and the scientists have put some of their funding

into tanks, filters and pumps

in this strange, incongruous but amazing room.

This is the kind of partnership that can save a species.

But I don't think I see enough of this sort of thing,

and I have been ludicrously lucky in my job.

I've traveled to loads of places and just basically followed around

brilliant people who are trying to use science to answer big questions

and solve problems.

I've hung out with scientists who have solved the mystery

of the origin of the menopause by tracking killer whales

off the north Pacific coast.

And I've followed around scientists

who've planted cameras in Antarctic penguin colonies,

because they were looking to capture the impacts of climate change

as it happens.

But it's this team that really stuck with me,

that really showed me the impact

that these delicate but really important relationships can have.

And I think the reason that it stuck with me as well

is because it's not common.

And one of the reasons it's not common

is because our traditional approach

of the hierarchical system of academic achievement

doesn't exactly encourage the type of humility

where scientists will look to nonscientists

and really ask for their input.

In fact, I think we have a bit of a tradition,

especially in the West,

of a kind of academically blinkered hubris

that has kept science historically an enterprise for the elite.

And I think although that's moved on,

it continues to be its downfall on occasion.

So here's my example from history

and my takedown of a scientific hero.

Sir Ernest Shackleton

and his Trans-Antarctic Expedition more than a century ago,

the celebrated ill-fated adventure.

On his way there,

Shackleton just didn't listen to the whalers in South Georgia.

They knew that region, and they told him you won't get through the ice this year.

It's too widespread, it's too far north, it's too dangerous.

And look what happened.

I mean, granted, that great adventure,

that story of heroic leadership that we still tell,

where he saved every single one of his men,

we wouldn't be telling that story if he'd just hightailed it for home

and taken their advice.

But it cost him his ship,

I would imagine quite a lot of cold injuries among the team,

a good few cases of PTSD

and Mrs. Chippy, the ship's cat, had to be shot

because the team couldn't afford any extra food as they fought to survive.

Now, that was all a very long time ago,

but as I've prepared for this talk,

I've revisited some of the stories that I have covered,

where these really unusual collaborations made a real positive difference.

So I spoke to former poachers

whose knowledge of where they used to hunt illegally

is now really important in conservation projects

in those same places.

And I spoke to an amazing artist

whose own experience of mental health struggles

has actually paved the way for him to take a role in designing and creating

a new, really innovative and beautiful mental health ward in a hospital.

Most recently, I worked here, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,

with a team of scientists that have been working there for decades.

One of their experiments growing crops in that area

has now turned into this.

It's Chernobyl's first vodka.

(Laughter)

It's pretty good, too! I've tasted it.

And this is actually, although it looks like a niche product,

it's set to be the first consumer product to come out of the exclusion zone

since the nuclear accident.

And that's actually the result of years of conversation

with local communities who still live on the periphery of that abandoned land

and want to know when they can -- and if they can -- safely grow food

and build businesses and rebuild their communities and their lives.

This was a product of humility,

of listening,

and I saw that in spades when I visited Pátzcuaro.

So I watched as a decades-experienced conservation biologist

called Gerardo Garcia

listened and watched super carefully

as a nun in a full habit and wimple and latex gloves

showed him how, if you tap an achoque on the head really gently,

it'll open its mouth so you can quickly get a DNA swab with a Q-tip.

(Laughter)

When scientists team up with, look to and defer to people

who have a really valuable perspective on what they're trying to do

but a totally different outlook,

something really special can happen.

Now, there is a truly global and a very, very ambitious example of this

called the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Now, that is not a snappy title, but stick with me.

This organization includes more than 130 countries,

and it's aiming to do nothing less than assess the state of the natural world

across our entire planet.

So it recently published this global assessment

on the state of nature,

and that could be the foundation for an international agreement

where all of those nations could sign up to finally take action

to tackle the biodiversity crisis that's happening on planet Earth

right now.

Now, I know from trying to communicate, trying to report on reports like this,

on assessments like this for a broad audience,

that these big international groups can seem so high-level

as to be kind of out of reach and nebulous,

but there's a group of human beings at the center of them,

the report's authors,

who have this formidable task of bringing together

all of that biological and ecological information

that paints a clear and accurate picture

of the state of the natural world.

And 10 years before this panel even set out to do that,

to put that assessment together,

they created what's called a "cultural concept framework."

This is essentially a cultural concept translation dictionary

for all of the different ways that we talk about the natural world.

So it formally recognizes, for example,

that "Mother Earth" and "nature" means the same thing.

And what that means is that Indigenous and local knowledge

can be brought into the same document

and given the weight and merit that it deserves

in that assessment of what state our natural environment is in.

And that is absolutely critical,

because an Inuit hunter might never publish in an academic journal,

but I'll bet you she knows more about the changes to her home Arctic community

because of climate change

than a scientist who spent many years going to and from that region

taking measurements.

And collectively, Indigenous people are the caretakers

of an estimated 25 percent of the entire global land surface,

including some of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

So imagine how much we're missing

if we don't cross those cultural boundaries,

or at least try to,

when we're trying to figure out how the world works

and how to protect it.

Every single research proposal is a new opportunity to do exactly that.

So what if, every time a research project was proposed,

it had to include a suggestion of a person or a group of people --

local farmers, Indigenous community leaders, nuns --

that researchers wanted to bring into the fold,

invite into their team and listen to?

I just want to let Sister Ofelia give her view

of why she is so particularly driven and dedicated

to the survival of the achoque.

(Audio) VG: Sister Ofelia, do you think that saving this species from extinction,

is that part of your work for God?

(Audio) SO: (speaks in Spanish)

(Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) It's the responsibility

of every human being

not to harm those who live around us.

That's all living things.

We're all created not only just to survive but to be happy and to make others happy.

All of us here are providing happiness by protecting this animal,

and we're also making Him happy.

(Audio) (Nuns singing)

VG: I feel like I should sort of slink off and let the nuns sing me out,

because it sounds so lovely.

But did you hear that?

"We're providing happiness."

Now, that's not a protocol you'd ever see outlined

in any formal research project proposal --

(Laughter)

but it's the impetus behind what's become the most successful breeding program

in the world

of an animal that was on the very brink of being wiped out.

And isn't that just wonderful?

Thank you.

(Applause)