The relationship between Alexander von Humboldt and the Leopoldina did not go beyond the fact that he was a member there.
No exchange, no lectures, no correspondence.
After all, the National Academy of Sciences can be credited with recognizing Humboldt's potential early on.
When he became a member at the age of 23, he was a senior miner in Franconia who dreamed of long journeys.
Today he is the one who realized that the living world is a network of relationships - that everything is interrelated.
Petra Ahne
Editor in the features section.
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Alexander von Humboldt was quoted with this postulate several times at the annual meeting of the Leopoldina on Friday and Saturday, it was just as much a statement as a warning.
The meeting, held at the Leopoldina headquarters in Halle as well as digitally, was dedicated to the topic of "Biodiversity and the diversity of life" and thus to one of the greatest global crises.
That diversity of life is in jeopardy, a million species are threatened with extinction, and the network of relationships that spans the planet is becoming full of holes.
Humans have to take care of that insofar as they are part of it themselves, depending on the ecosystem services that nature provides them.
At the same time, it is the force that changes this nature over the long term.
Birds make you happy
The presentations at the annual meeting not only outlined this tension - so far unique in the history of the earth - but also the status and methodology of research, which on the one hand documents the biodiversity crisis with data collection, experiments and simulation models, and on the other hand is working on solutions to overcome it. The fact that the learned society chose this topic for its meeting can also be understood as a signal: The loss of biological diversity is still receiving less attention than global warming. Both must be considered together.
Kathrin Böhning-Gaese, Director of the Senckenberg Research Center for Biodiversity and Climate, designed an overall picture in her introductory lecture, into which the later lectures were incorporated as informative details. She listed the reasons for the decline in species: the exploitation of animal species, environmental pollution, climate change, but by far the most important: land use, and then agriculture. This fact was to drag on through the two days like an alarm call. What people eat and how this food is produced is a major reason for the ecological crisis into which they have maneuvered.
What can you do? Asked Böhning-Gaese, and he stuck to the big line: It takes nothing less than a transformation of society. An agricultural turnaround, large protected areas and an awareness of the value of biodiversity, also in relation to well-being. In addition, she had the nice result of a study ready: Having more birds in your own environment makes you satisfied as well as ten percent more wages.
Urs Niggli, one of the best-known experts in organic farming, who has been pointing out for years that purely organic - and less productive - agriculture affects the world's population, took up the question of how to feed ten billion people in the near future and at the same time reduce the ecological footprint would not feed and would require even more arable land. He advocates a mixture of organic farming and high-tech. A diversification of the crop rotation could, for example, put a stop to the western corn rootworm, whose name already says why it is feared. In other cases, resistance can be achieved using the CRISPR / Cas gene scissors.
How research benefits from digitization sounded in several lectures.
Ulrich Brose, research group leader at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, explained that computer models now allow precise predictions of how a stress factor at one point in an ecosystem affects its other parts - something that has long been considered unpredictable.
The Vice President of the Leopoldina and chemist Robert Schlögl gave a combative closing remarks.
It was strange, he said, that some believed that Homo sapiens was above biodiversity, and asked if Homo is as sapiens as they are called: “We know that what we do is dangerous, and yet nothing happens . ”That also means:“ The voice of science is too quiet. ”To change this is now the task of the academy.