Student Takeover Season: The Sustainability of Zoos

In this student takeover episode  of the Meliora Podcast from the Sustainability & Resilience Institute at the University of Southampton  we discuss the topic of sustainability in zoos – a topic we feel is not discussed enough. We cover the advantages and disadvantages that zoos provide to global sustainability and how they can be improved for more effective sustainability. We navigate this by focussing on 6 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.We examine the evolution of zoos from entertainment venues to centres of education and conservation, highlighting how zoos contribute to global sustainability via educating the public about protected species and their importance. It covers the wide range of educational programmes that zoos provide, as well as how zoos are starting to implement sustainable practices involving resource consumption and production in order to be more beneficial than they already are. These benefits that zoos provide to the world and the positives that they contribute to global sustainability have allowed for protection of many species and unfathomable amounts of research.However, with all of the attributes that zoos provide there are still negative factors that need to be accounted for. Zoos still heavily contribute to the consumption of various resources and their energy consumption is a challenge that must be tackled. Despite zoo’s devotion to education of the public there are still a number of problems surrounding whether or not they provide enough awareness, as well as asking questions on who is at fault for these issues. It questions whether zoos can further reduce their environmental impact and discusses the ongoing ethical concerns about animal captivity and relocation, especially in light of climate change. The effectiveness of zoos in educating the public versus serving as entertainment is also debated, probing whether zoos are truly fulfilling their conservation potential. Episode researchers: Libby Kale, Louie Elkington, Joseph Bailey, Charlotte Buxton, Samuel Hart and Oluwamayomikun AdesokanEpisode host: Libby KaleEpisode guests: Oluwamayomikun Adesokan and Samuel HartEpisode editor: Charlotte BuxtonThis episode is part of the Student Takeover Season on the Meliora Podcast, and is a group project from the University of Southampton 'Global Sustainability Challenges' module.