Conversation with Ferenc Jordán, network researcher and biologist

Ferenc Jordán is a network researcher and biologist, as well as a systems ecologist. He has been living in Vienna for some time, but works at the University of Parma, commuting by train to reduce his ecological footprint, having sold his car. 

He was the head of the Balaton Limnological Research Institute, a fierce opponent of the concrete encasement of the lake, the reckless destruction of reeds, and the environmental damage caused by the construction of luxury properties. After a year and a half, he was dismissed. He no longer plans his professional career or future in his home country. | Interview with Andrea Nichs – photo: Vanda Bujnovszky

– What research are you currently involved in at Parma?

In a Norwegian-Italian collaboration, we are investigating how the ecology of the Barents Sea has changed due to the effects of warming. Some Atlantic species have appeared, completely disrupting the ecosystem. 

The Norwegians send the data, and we calculate how the structure of the community living in the sea has changed, how this affects the functioning of the ecosystem, and based on this, we will make recommendations for fishing. 

I have been working on this project for three years, we will finish soon, and then I will continue my research work in Cluj.

– Most people involved in environmental protection have some idyllic rural childhood associated with a forest. Was that the case for you as well?

I am from Pest and we didn’t have a garden, but I spent most of my summers around Lake Balaton. I was outside all day, searching for snails and bird feathers, observing nature; I was interested in everything about it. Durrell and Attenborough were my two gods.

– You earned your doctorate in genetics at university; what prompted the shift?

As a biologist, I was interested in everything, from ethology to biochemistry, ecology, and genetics. At that time, the genetic doctoral program at ELTE was of excellent quality, which is why I went there, and I have no regrets. But if you are interested in everything, you eventually arrive at the fundamental questions of biology: why do we age, why are we multicellular, how reliable or stable is a biological system, and so on. From there, it is just a step to the questions of biological and ecological networks, which seemed like a very interesting field. 

I was fascinated by the first collections of food webs and their mathematical analysis. Joel Cohen, a researcher from New York, had a book full of data, which was a big deal at the time!

– The issue of global warming has become a tiresomely repetitive topic. The Norwegian-Italian research you are working on is essentially examining one of its effects. Perhaps because we have become accustomed to the idea, we no longer really consider its significance, yet a survey indicates that 2023 was the warmest year globally since measurements began.

This means that for more than half of the year, we exceeded the average temperature for those days by at least 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. What does this mean, and why is the industrial revolution the reference point?

I am generally very skeptical about major agreements and treaties, despite the fact that it is incredibly important for the peoples of the earth to collectively say stop to overconsumption and take action. 

However, I consider most of the measures to be mere window dressing, and their professional content is quite weak in my opinion. They are filled with arbitrary numbers and unrealistic goals, mainly serving to soothe our conscience.

The question of the reference point arises: what are we comparing to, what state do we want to preserve? The period before becoming human could be a reference, as could modern agriculture or the time before the industrial revolution, or even our childhood. It depends on what each person envisions. These aspects are not clarified either. 

It can also be said that activities related to the protection of the biosphere are becoming increasingly bureaucratic, reflecting a more diplomatic, legal, and economic mindset, distancing itself from scientific thinking. Many ecologists take pride in this, claiming that we finally “speak the same language” as decision-makers, but in the process, we sacrifice hard-won knowledge.

– For decades, natural scientists have been “saying their piece,” but it seems they are losing out to social sciences or tourism, for example.

Yes, natural scientists have been saying roughly the same thing for 60-70 years. In fact, Humboldt spoke about nature conservation back in 1799: as soon as he set foot in South America, he saw that the Spanish colonizers had made their mark. Recently, it seems to have become a mass phenomenon, a movement where people are starting to take responsibility.

The problem arises when things reach the level of decision-making. There, we encounter hard-core lobbies. It is clear that almost every process related to the protection of the biosphere should be redirected in the opposite direction.

– You wrote about this in your book “The End of Man, the Chance for Nature.” Quite a dramatic title…

Serious researchers say that humanity, or more precisely our current culture, may have only 50-100 years left. So, the situation is very dire.

If the situation is this dire, then I believe that either people should not write anything, or if they do write, it should be provocative and thought-provoking. That was the aim of the book: to shake readers awake.

There are many extreme ideas in it, but I did not want to write yet another book about how large our carbon footprint is or how there are fewer and fewer butterflies. Instead, I dug deep and asked questions: who do we imagine ourselves to be on this planet, how do we behave, what rules do we live by, why are we unable to solve a series of problems?

Ecological systems can adapt fantastically well, but human activities often do not allow time for response; we bind nature, preventing it from functioning. Yet, a happy society can only be imagined alongside a healthy nature. We do not even realize how much we owe to the ecological processes happening around us: clean water, clean air, pollinating insects.

Ecology is the science of coexistence, and we would be part of the system, but we are increasingly distancing ourselves, exiting the game, wanting to advance from being the main character to becoming the director.

Why do we think we can and must consume and reproduce without restraint?

We are consuming everything around us, using up resources equivalent to two planets each year. To put it in a prosaic analogy (and this is not my own example), we drink in the pub until we run out of money. Then, of course, we can drink on credit, but that will eventually be collected hard. In short, we are gambling with our children’s future.

The book is somewhat moralizing, philosophical, supported by a wealth of scientific data. I usually say that the genre of my book is volcanic eruption.

– You touched on the issue of overpopulation with a sentence earlier. How serious is the problem? Is there a possibility for self-correction? You also have three children, so you must have thought about this quite a few times.

Transforming social norms could be a solution. For example, it shouldn’t be a problem if someone chooses not to have children. Of course, I’m not saying that the goal is for humanity to go extinct. Someone can have multiple children, but we should move towards responsible family planning and quality child-rearing. Women shouldn’t have children just because our culture or society expects it of them. It should be kept in mind how many children a family can raise with love and in a quality manner.

In the book, I talk a lot about how inflexible we are, and how we still live by rules that were valid in the past but no longer hold true today. In the past, we needed hunters and warriors, and child mortality was high. That is no longer the case.

Our culture could help us overcome the problem, but it also freezes us in place, preventing us from adapting to the world we have created. Everything is changing at a crazy pace, yet we are incredibly rigid. We invented something a hundred or a thousand years ago and cling to it. In contrast, natural systems are very adaptive. 

Let me give you a very simple example: water scarcity is becoming increasingly severe, drinking water is running out, yet we flush toilets with crystal-clear water. Why? You don’t need to be a neurosurgeon to see how unreasonable this is.

There are a few positive examples: the management of the ozone layer is perhaps the greatest success story. Why couldn’t we also declare that starting tomorrow at 8 AM, not a gram of green space can be destroyed? We should be focusing on rewilding areas because nature doesn’t have enough space; it is constrained and cannot function properly. We are devouring forests, fields, and exhausting our environment.

The natural response to all this would actually be relatively simple. Let’s say rabbits start to reproduce, which they are already good at. The first regulatory option is that their food runs out, the second is that predators keep them in check, the third is that their habitat drastically decreases and then disappears, the fourth is that a parasite finds them, and finally, they start to fight among themselves.

Humans have more or less solved the first three: there is plenty of food, we have largely elegantly exterminated our predators, and there is no problem with that, and we have populated the entire planet. Epidemics can still be dangerous, although this does not necessarily reduce our eight billion population significantly. Thus, we are left with wars and local conflicts over water and food.

From an ecological perspective, this is the only control factor we can currently rely on. It’s a sensitive topic, and there is a lot of debate about how many people the Earth can support. I think the limit is around one to one and a half billion, or perhaps even that is too much.

It’s not just a question of how much food we need or how much waste we produce, but also that, for example, modern agricultural production requires the destruction of half of the natural environment. This is also part of our ecological footprint, as is the global trade and the mass production of countless completely unnecessary convenience items.

Someone who uses an electric leaf blower to move leaves because they are too lazy to sweep is not going to be “green” just because they drink from a paper straw afterward. So, a much more complex approach is needed.

It is clear that consumption must be dramatically and immediately reduced, including global trade. However, the cause of overconsumption is not just luxury yachts and private jets, but also modern agriculture that serves the masses, which is ravaging the planet.

– Well, that sounds quite dystopian…

Yes, I am pessimistic as well. There is no international dialogue, no solidarity.

– What will happen to us in, say, fifty years?

There will be a huge problem with water scarcity. There will be numerous local skirmishes and conflicts, air travel will be restricted, and transportation in general will become very expensive. People will return to the point – which they could actually do wisely now, but we will do it out of necessity and suffering, preferring to go to the neighboring village for tomatoes rather than buying Moroccan tomatoes at the supermarket.

Right now, we still have a choice; soon it will be a necessity. It is still a matter of choice whether I get in the car or take the train, and so on. But instead of thinking, we are heading straight for the wall, and once again we will return to the question of who will be able to adapt and who will not. If you will, some control mechanisms will be activated again.

– More and more people are choosing to move out of cities. Could this be a solution?

What if we left the cities in millions? Is it good for nature when two million people from Budapest or ten million from New York say they are fed up with city life and go out to the stream bank to garden? If we uniformly spread the masses across the Earth, nature would cease to exist. Globally, this is not a solution.

In any case, every attempt is important; we encounter exciting patterns, and people often follow patterns rather than laws. But for now, this is just a drop in the ocean. A global shift in lifestyle and philosophy could bring some kind of solution.

– The picture is not very positive; how are you preparing your children for this?

I have two older sons, aged twenty and twenty-two, and my daughter is nine. We talk a lot about these issues, and I always give them the same advice: be incredibly flexible, learn languages, do not get attached to real estate or possessions, and try to carry everything that is valuable in their minds (and hearts). Then they will be perfect adaptation machines.

– During interviews, lectures, and discussions, don’t you get tired of repeating the same fifteen to twenty important thoughts over and over?

I enjoy talking about this, but if something were to happen, I would be even more enthusiastic. By the way, I prefer to talk to those young people who do not think green.

I also like to provoke environmentalists; I often talk about how invasive species are not necessarily enemies and can sometimes provide solutions to problems because they can help an ecosystem adapt. I didn’t come up with this; it has been how the biosphere works for four billion years: during mass extinctions, generalists with broad tolerances keep ecosystems alive while a number of specialists with narrow tolerances go extinct.

This is unacceptable for conservation; we are not happy about either extinction or the emergence of new species.

But nature still operates this way, and we are currently living in a period of mass extinction. Of course, invasive species can cause many problems, but there will be more and more situations where they also bring solutions. Nature does not care which of them is endemic; what matters is that the system remains functional. We cannot do anything better than nature.

Let nature function; that will be the best approach. We should not interfere because nine times out of ten, it turns out that we cause trouble. Everyone wants to do good, but no one can predict the effects of their actions, and even afterward, we cannot fully monitor what happened. My true hero is a Swedish billionaire who bought a vast area of the Amazon rainforest and does nothing with it. He doesn’t even go there; he just lets it grow and allows whatever needs to happen, happen. There is no better way to practice conservation.

– What should we do then, how do you do it?

There is a difference between ego and eco, right? We need to consider whether what we do for our own benefit is also good for nature. When on a sunny weekend, a million of us go hiking in the Pilis, we litter, overwhelm, pollute, and trample the area, without thinking of a partnership with nature. The only thing that matters is that hiking is good because I want to hear birds chirping, I want to breathe clean air, I want to see greenery, and then I leave behind 70 tons of trash. 

I avoid this by not going hiking when everyone else does. If a person avoids the crowd, they are already doing something good. Every biologist dreams of watching lions in Serengeti National Park. There are three thousand tourists for every three lions, so there’s no need to go. It’s terrifying that tours are even being organized to Antarctica, with boats lined up while one group finishes taking selfies. Perhaps we are now finishing off the last, relatively untouched areas. But a bored bureaucrat, when going on vacation, will do whatever their wallet allows.

I don’t want to discourage anyone; individuals can do a lot for their environment, but we need to rethink cultural and social dogmas and adapt to the changed circumstances. Planting trees is also important, for example; the intention is good, but reforestation is more effective if someone ensures that the area can still be a forest in a hundred years. Of course, we should plant more trees than we pave our driveways.

Source: Vulkan Literary Journal