Agents of change

“The world is in a mess . . . we are not doing enough,” stressed botanist and ecologist Ghillean Tolmie Prance. Prance’s warning echoed the concerns of other participants at a recent Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History symposium entitled “Agents of Change.”

The planet is facing the compounded challenges of ballooning population growth and rapid climate change. In 2013 the current world population of nearly 7.2 billion consumed over 150% of Earth’s sustainable biocapacity. The United Nations forecasts that by 2050 the population will surpass 9 billion. How will the world feed an additional 2 billion people?

The question becomes especially daunting when put in the context of Earth’s diminishing resources. According to a World Bank study, Earth will be 2 °C warmer by 2030, which will decrease agricultural productivity by one-fifth. Current levels of population growth and consumption will be unsustainable. The solution to this complex problem, at least in part, rests with plants. That is where botanical gardens come in.

The director and CEO of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), Chipper Wichman, opened the symposium by asking if botanical gardens were doing “enough” to address issues such as food security and the extinction crisis. Made up of a network of gardens and preserves in Hawaii and Florida, the NTBG has supported conservation, restoration, and research in botany, ethnobotany, and horticulture since its congressional charter in 1964. How can botanical gardens be, as the title of the symposium suggested, “agents of change”?

The NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute offers one avenue for botanical gardens to confront the loss of biodiversity and the disappearance of indigenous knowledge, which is linked to food security. Breadfruit, a starchy potato-like fruit grown throughout Oceania, is easy to cultivate, reduces top soil loss, and stores carbon. It can be fried, fermented, boiled, or baked and substituted for a variety of other foodstuffs.

The Breadfruit Institute has collected hundreds of varieties of the tree and, along with plant company Cultivaris , has distributed more than 40 000 trees to 30 countries around the world. Growing breadfruit in multispecies agroforests, like other types of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), increases sustainable agricultural productivity, nurtures the resilience of agricultural systems to handle climate change, and reduces agriculturally produced greenhouse gas emissions.

Many botanical gardens have taken to creating seed banks. After researchers select and collect seeds, they clean them, dry them, and then store them at temperatures near −20 °C for future use. About 80% of seeds can survive this treatment, making seed banking one of the most rational strategies for addressing threats associated with monoculture and the loss of biodiversity. Kayri Havens from the Chicago Botanic Garden put the price of banking all US flora at $250 million, less than one-sixth of what it cost MGM to build the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas.

Plants feed us, mitigate climate change, are a source of medicine, and provide us with oxygen to breathe, but we often take them for granted and overlook their central role in our lives. Addressing the group of experts in botanical research, conservation, and biological diversity who were gathered at the Smithsonian for the symposium, Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, told them that they needed to be more “courageous” in counteracting this “plant blindness.”

The challenge of increasing awareness of our dependence on plants for survival, and fostering a culture of stewardship as opposed to consumption, is no small task. But the risks of this blindness are too great, and too global, for botanical gardens not to take on the challenge.

Teasel Muir-Harmony is an associate historian at the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. Her research interests include science and technology, American foreign relations, the Cold War, public diplomacy, and museums and exhibitions.