Think Nature has welcomed Dr. Atte Moilanen as Chief Science Officer, and has opened a Finland branch as its an EU base.

Think Nature Inc. is pleased to announce that Dr. Atte Moilanen has been appointed full-time Chief Science Officer (CSO) to promote the development of fundamental technologies related to biodiversity business, and that the Finland Branch has been established as an EU base.

The purpose of the Finland branch is to conduct R&D that contributes to biodiversity business and we have recently welcomed Dr. Moilanen, a former professor at the University of Helsinki and the Natural History Museum of Finland, as the CSO.

Born 1968, Dr. Atte Moilanen holds university degrees in computer science, applied mathematics, and ecology. He has been working on spatial ecology, conservation decision analysis, and ecologically based land-use planning for three decades. Moilanen’s primary approach has been top-down, conceptual and methodological, including efforts at software development. For instance, he originated the Zonation software used globally in high-resolution spatial biodiversity analyses. Lately, Moilanen has also worked extensively on biodiversity offsets, which have linkages to biodiversity credits and markets. For his series of research achievements, he was honoured in 2018 by the Society for Conservation Biology for his cleverness in designing analyses for conservation decision-making. The title of his award plenary lecture was ‘Twelve operationally important decisions in offsetting: why biodiversity offsetting fails.  At the end of his speech, he emphasised that ‘implementation of scientific knowledge into society is one of the big questions’, while highlighting critical challenges in the field.

Comment from Dr. Atte Moilanen, CSO of Think Nature Inc.

Biodiversity is a highly complex field that concerns the entirety of the natural world and its interactions with people. I view biodiversity conservation as a hierarchy of considerations with many interactions. At the top level are major considerations: biodiversity, economics, and the society. These further divide into major operational building blocks like species and habitat types, costs and opportunity costs, ecosystem services and livelihoods, plus threats towards biodiversity and the actions we could take to counteract them. When going down to subconcepts and details, the dimensionality of detail becomes enormous. Taking just species as an example, we have approximately ten million of them in the world. Each species has characteristics such as habitat suitability, carrying capacity, local population dynamics, dispersal behaviour and connectivity, functional traits, genes, interactions with other species, and interactions with humans. Of alternative conservation actions, we have thousands of them. When going to high detail, the complexity of biodiversity-related analysis can quickly get out of hand: what should be done?

This brings us to operationally relevant biodiversity-analysis. In my opinion, well-informed simplification is key. Major considerations include firstly balance in how the main components of the hierarchy are treated, not going very deep in one place while completely ignoring entire upper-level considerations elsewhere. This distinguishes societally relevant, operational methods from science: individual scientific studies can focus on details whereas on-the-ground decisions require balance. Second, there is cost-efficiency, which becomes central both for businesses and the society at large when choosing between alternative conservation actions and locations where to act (or not). Third, there are inevitable uncertainties: how to deal with them? Fourth, there is the question of how analyses should be implemented at the operational level. Here, data is critical. Data about biodiversity are limited and biased in many ways. Consequently, analyses need to employ well-informed simplification so that ecologically justified answers can be derived despite imperfect data and enormous underlying complexity and uncertainties. Conceptualizing operational analytical strategies is very interesting. 

I have been impressed with Think Nature, understanding their commitment to the development of biodiversity-related methods and analyses that are both ecologically justified and needed by businesses and the society alike. I am honoured by the opportunity to join Think Nature and excited to participate in its activities. Being at the front-line of development around operationally relevant biodiversity analysis will be a worthy challenge. I much look forward to starting in my new position.

Comment from Dr. Yasuhiro Kubota, CEO of Think Nature Inc.

I am very pleased to welcome Dr. Atte Moilanen as Think Nature’s Chief Science Officer (CSO). When we invited Dr. Moilanen, we discussed the significance of implementing conservation science into society in relation to career shifts from academia to business. Alongside climate change and carbon neutrality, biodiversity and nature-positive initiatives are now being argued in the context of business. However, our concern is that scientific knowledge regarding biodiversity has yet to be mainstreamed in business, and that mechanisms are being discussed that involve the movement of money without any scientific rationality or credibility.

With the appointment of Dr. Atte Moilanen as Think Nature CSO, we intend to promote R&D related to biodiversity conservation and restoration from a business perspective, and to promote ‘sincere biodiversity business’.