One of UQ's leading scientists will take his work to the literary world this Friday, September 11.
Professor Hugh Possingham, director of UQ's Ecology Centre, will be speaking at Tropical forests on the brink: can we save them?, an evening of enlightening talks and a robust panel discussion as part of the 2009 Brisbane Writers Festival, hosted by UQ Science.
Professor Hugh Possingham, a recent Eureka Prize winner, will showcase the UQ Ecology Centre’s work in studying and identifying threats to biodiversity.
The floor will then be thrown open to questions from the audience, directed at a panel of experts on biodiversity, conservation and climate change including writer Andrew Westoll, author of The Riverbones.
The Riverbones traces Mr Westoll’s love affair with Suriname, a tiny country in South America, which has the largest tract of pristine rainforest on earth (more than 80 percent of Suriname's land-mass consists of unspoiled rain forest) and was his home in 2001.
A Canadian primatologist-turned-journalist, Mr Westoll is in the country for the Brisbane Writers Festival and will be discussing issues of sustainability in Suriname at the Friday evening event.
Also speaking will be Mr Oscar Venter, a UQ ecologist, who said a conservation scheme called REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) could make the conservation of tropical forests more profitable than their clearing.
“Countries with tropical forests, such as Indonesia, are pushing hard to develop. Part of this development involves clearing forests to make room for agriculture,” he said.
“To them this makes sense, standing forests and the biodiversity they contain have had no value in the past, you can't sell orangutans and elephants on conservation markets, they don't exist. But carbon markets do exist and they traded US $126 billion in 2008.
“If REDD is successful at harvesting some of these funds to protect tropical forests by giving them value, this could fundamentally change conservation in these countries, and provide benefits for mammals and other taxa at a scale that we've never before seen.”
UQ PhD student Mr Venter is the lead author of the study Carbon Payments as a Safeguard for Threatened Tropical Mammals, published in the journal Conservation Letters, which attracted the attention of over 100 media outlets around the world.
The study discovered forest conservation in Kalimantan would prevent 2.1 billion tonnes of carbon emissions.
“What excites me most about our study is that those areas that are particularly good for carbon, and therefore most likely to receive REDD protection, also house very high levels of threatened mammals, almost twice the average number," he said.
"So as REDD emerges to fund tropical forest conservation, it really has the potential to deliver powerful outcomes for mitigating climate change, as well conserving imperilled biodiversity."
Dr James Watson, from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, will also speak about his personal experience working to protect forests with REDD in Suriname and other countries.
Dr Watson said while tropical forests only cover about seven percent of the earth’s land surface, they accounted for over half of the planet’s biodiversity, making it an imperative to save them.
“Ultimately, our goal is to help fashion an agreement in Copenhagen that will allow tropical forests to become a part of a more comprehensive climate agreement – one that will reduce emissions as well as produce co-benefits,” Dr Watson said.
“There’s already a good case to be made for ending the exclusion of existing forests in the next climate pact. This new evidence shows just one of the many benefits that a REDD accord could have.”
The event will be held at 7pm on Friday, September 11, in Auditorium One at the State Library of Queensland. It is free but seating is limited and can be booked online at http://www.science.uq.edu.au/tropical-forests-on-the-brink
On the same day, UQ physicist and Smart State Fellow, Associate Professor Paul Meredith, will take part in the "Science is Stranger than Fiction" panel, which will explore the world of possibilities between science fiction and science fact.
Associate Professor Meredith will be joined by authors Marianne de Pierres and Peter McAllister to explore the boundaries between science fiction, science fact, and the endless possibilities in between, at the State Library’s Queensland Terrace.
Friday 11 September will also see Queensland Brain Institute neuroscientist Professor Mandyam Srinivasan discussing the creative passion and drive shared by authors and scientists in an event titled "Creativity: Art or Science?"
He will be joined by best-selling Brisbane author John Birmingham and innovation advocate Rowan Gilmore from the Australian Institute for Commercialisation.
The event, which will also include the launch of the State Government's new Science and Technology website, will kick of at 2.45 pm in Auditorium one at the State Library.
The University of Queensland is a premier partner and sponsor of the Brisbane Writers Festival.
Media: Oscar Venter (07 33651671 or oventer@uq.edu.au), Dr James Watson (0400 307 929 or james.jameswatson@gmail.com), Professor Hugh Possingham (07 33467541 or h.possingham@uq.edu.au) or Travis Taylor (07 33658598 or t.taylor1@uq.edu.au).
