The second episode of House on Fire explores the extraordinary lengths that scientists have gone to in order to find and preserve genetic diversity for future generations. In the teeth of the sixth mass extinction, how urgent is the task of locating and preserving the species that remain? And how might it be done?

On World Environment Day 2018, it’s time to inject some hope and inspiration into the mix.

What do ants have to do with self-driving cars? How might the giant monkey frog of the Amazon help to solve the problem of antimicrobial resistance? Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Founder and Chairman of SpaceTime Ventures, explains why the Amazon basin holds the key to unlocking a bio-economic revolution potentially worth trillions of dollars – and explores the three challenges that must be overcome.

How a giant Amazonian frog could help save millions of lives

The stress on the earth’s natural systems caused by human activity has considerably worsened in the 25 years since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. As a result of the “great acceleration”1 in human economic activity since the mid-20th century, research from many earth system scientists’ suggests that life on land could be entering a period of unprecedented environmental systems change.

What do ants have to do with self-driving cars? How might the giant monkey frog of the Amazon help to solve the problem of antimicrobial resistance? Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Founder and Chairman of Space Time Ventures, explains why the Amazon basin holds the key to unlocking a bio-economic revolution potentially worth trillions of dollars – and explores the three challenges that must be overcome.

Autonomous vehicles controlled by software based on swarming ants, and blood pressure drugs informed by snake venom, are just two examples presented by Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Chairman of Space Time Ventures in Brazil, of how nature in the Amazon has inspired technology.

The nature of environmental and natural resource security has changed dramatically since the 1990s. Over the last two decades, the global economy, geared towards exploiting natural resources to serve an exponentially growing population of consumers, has far exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. The depth of the transformation has been so profound that it has pushed Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Indeed, scientists have identified planetary boundaries that it would be unwise to transgress, and we seem to be in the process of crossing many of them right now.

For a long time now, humans have drawn on the Amazon and its tremendous biodiversity – countless living organisms, plants, animals and insects – for raw materials and commodities. We have done it in the most unsustainable way possible, and unless we change course, the damage will be irreversible.