We are in the sixth mass extinction phase and it’s primarily driven by human activity. Globally, 1.2 million species are at risk of extinction and around 70% of the planet's ice-free land has already been altered, primarily for agricultural use. In the second episode of this five-part miniseries, we look at AI's role in sustainability and how it can help us better understand the natural world.

In Europe, unsustainable farming and forestry, urban sprawl and pollution are predominantly to blame for a drastic decline in biodiversity. This latest era of extinction in the natural world also comes at a time when we are making giant leaps in an artificial realm and while AI is no silver bullet it could help us better understand how to sustainably reinvent our agriculture, farming and food systems. Protecting species is also of the utmost importance. Insects, for example, are an important piece in the biodiversity puzzle and are under threat. But AI can help us understand our insect friends and the environment they serve. In this episode we speak with Faustine Bas-Defossez, Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, which is the largest federation of environmental NGOs in Europe, where she discusses how AI can help understand the problems that exist within the agricultural industry and the importance of transforming our food systems to a more sustainable, circular model. Katharina Schmidt, CEO of APIC.AI, an AI startup from Germany that monitors bee populations, tells us how AI models are helping to analyse individual bee behaviours in a hive of 50,000, and what this tells us about the health of our environment. Adam Elman, Head of Sustainability, EMEA, at Google further extols the value that AI can bring to mapping key environmental change and the value of data sharing on a global scale.                           

Our Sources for the show: FT Resources, WWF, LSE, European Parliament, Royal Society, United Nations.

This content is paid for by Google and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department.

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