Insects in the spotlight at Nobel Conference in St. Peter this week

INTERVIEWER: Every year, the Nobel Foundation of the Nobel Peace Prize holds a conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. It's the only event in the US authorized by the Nobel Foundation that brings and the brightest scientific minds to the state from around the world. Each year has a different theme. And for the Nobel Conference 59, which kicks off tomorrow, the theme is "Insects-- Little Body, Big Impact."

Joining us now is one of the presenters at the conference, Shannon Olsson, She's the global director of a sustainability organization called the Echo Network, and the special scientific envoy to India for the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. Shannon Olsson, welcome to the program.

SHANNON OLSSON: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here to speak with you.

INTERVIEWER: It's a pleasure having you here. Start, if you would, please, by telling us the kind of research that you do.

SHANNON OLSSON: So broadly, the research I do is in a field called chemical ecology. And it's based on the premise that everything in the universe is made of molecules, even us-- everything around us. And organisms on this planet-- not all of them can see, not all of them have ears to hear, not all of them can speak, but all of them have the capacity to detect those molecules and to communicate with each other in their environment. So in many ways, chemical ecology is the study of the universal language of nature through chemistry, and that's what I study.

INTERVIEWER: Wow. Let's talk a bit about how then you intersect with the theme of insects for this Nobel Conference. Most of us think of bugs as annoying pests, you know. What is the intersection of your work, especially as it relates to insects and humans?

SHANNON OLSSON: Yeah. So insects are so important. I do think that we have this feeling, especially as we are moving more and more indoors in our modern lives that they're the mosquitoes that bite us and bring disease, or the cockroaches in the kitchen, or the flies on our dinner plate. But actually the vast majority of insects on this planet actually either do no harm to us or more importantly, they actually offer very important services.

They eat the foliage and leaves so that plants don't get overgrown, which is actually a positive thing for the environment. They live underground and break down and digest matter, so they help make soil. They serve as pollinators like honey bees and many, many other insects as well. They do an enormous benefit to us. And in fact, we actually couldn't survive on this planet without insects, but they're often thought of in a negative way. And the hope is that by having events like this, I'm so pleased that the Nobel Conference has decided to study and talk about these wonderful creatures because they are so essential to the future of humanity as well.

INTERVIEWER: Boy, I can tell you that folks probably would disagree, which is great to hear you. I love your voice. You sound so excited about this. And I know that you are giving a talk-- Fly Psychology 101. So it is fun to think about fly psychology, what is there to learn about flies?

SHANNON OLSSON: Yeah. So I was taught by an advisor-- I went to school at Cornell University, and my advisor's name was Tom Eisner. And he's often credited as being the father of my field of chemical ecology. And he wrote a book, For Love of Insects. And what he actually was also was a naturalist. And naturalists are types of scientists who believe in going out into the world and studying organisms where they live and how they live, and really trying to understand the world from their viewpoint.

So really this idea of fly psychology, it's a little bit of a funny pun, of course, but the idea of really trying to understand how these very important creatures go about living their lives, how they go about doing all of these services I mentioned. How they live with us and how we can better live with them for our own future as a human race on this planet. So that's really what I'm going to be talking about, and what I'm very passionate about as you can probably hear.

INTERVIEWER: I can certainly hear it in your voice. Absolutely. I'm wondering about the role of climate change. Obviously, we are focused on the world and rising temperatures and the effects of that. And we think of-- well, I'm thinking of the video of the polar bears the ice melting on the polar caps and suffering polar bears and marine life dying and that kind of thing, but I'm wondering about insects and climate change impacts to the insect world.

SHANNON OLSSON: So climate change is one thing, but just the massive change in how we utilize our land over the past 100 years. Obviously, when we think about the Green Revolution and the ability to grow crops, which actually has taken so many countries like the one I work in in India out of starvation in many cases, but also brought forward a lot of use of things like pesticides.

And pesticides don't just kill pests, they actually kill many types of insects. And so a lot of this use of chemicals, fertilizers, and also land degradation, removal of forests, all of these things compound actually have decimated the insect biomass or the number of insects that we have across the country. And there's countless studies now pretty much in every landscape you can imagine that insects numbers have decreased exponentially.

And for any of your viewers out there, just think about it when you grew up. If you're like me, I'm in my 40s, think about growing up and driving in the summertime and think of how many insects hit your windshield. And nowadays, think about it-- and there's a massive difference. And that in itself, this windshield experiment is really the surest way that I can say that we have really changed how many insects are on this planet. And that's bad news since they do so many services for us.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned pesticides, herbicides, I mean, should we stop-- is there a way that just a normal resident can help the insect population?

SHANNON OLSSON: I think there's many things that we can do. I think you being more conscious in general about how you consume things that you need. I mean, we all have to eat obviously. But inasmuch as you have the power and the ability, to pay attention of where your food is coming from and trying to certainly buy local as much as possible.

And if you are able to buy, buy pesticide-free produce as much as you can. And also really trying to pay attention to the greenery around you. Not trying to have manicured lawns all the time, keeping more wild meadows, having plants that are friendly to pollinators and other insects. And trying to leave as many wild spaces as you are able to do. I think a lot of this can go a long way. And I think that every individual really does have a role to play in this.

And I think we often feel powerless when we talk about things like climate change, that these are massive things that the government or even international organizations have to deal with, but individuals have a large role to play in the choices that they make and the way that they use the money that they have available to them. So I strongly encourage everyone to think about this when they buy their food and when they plant things in their garden, to think about the impact they have on the little creatures around them.

INTERVIEWER: So before you go, I would be remiss if I didn't ask about the Echo Network. Can you talk about that?

SHANNON OLSSON: Yeah. That's a community that I founded in 2019, and I've been working in India for almost 10 years now since 2014. And I just kept seeing things changing so rapidly. The scale at which India itself is changing because of the rapid economic development that it's having, the increase in population that it's having has profound impacts on the landscape.

And I felt somewhat powerless as a scientist to be able to provide the information that I felt that I could bring from science and technology to the people that could really use it. So the Echo Network is a community, and we really try to teach each other how to listen. How do governments listen to scientists? How do scientists listen to corporations? How do corporations listen to NGOs? How can we better listen to each other and make the changes that are needed?

Insects adapt very quickly. They adapt to the world so quickly and we have so much to learn from them about how we can adapt our lives and our livelihoods to better sustain ourselves on this planet. And that's what the Echo Network is all about.

INTERVIEWER: Fascinating. Shannon, thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

SHANNON OLSSON: Oh, thank you so much for having me. And please come to the Nobel Conference and hear myself and all of the other wonderful speakers talk about insects.

INTERVIEWER: I appreciate it. As a matter of fact, Shannon Olsson will be speaking tomorrow at the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. You can get tickets for single sessions or the whole conference. We'll have a link on our website, mprnews.org.