Nature and Human Society: The Quest for a Sustainable World (1997)
Chapter: Reaching the Public: The Challenge of Communicating Biodiversity
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Reaching the Public:
The Challenge of Communicating Biodiversity
Scientists tell us that we stand on the brink of a great wave of extinction, unparalleled since the demise of dinosaurs. This time our own species is the driving cause. The planet stands to lose an untold storehouse of genetic information. Unique and miraculous expressions of Creation will be erased forever. Lost, too, will be precious threads in Earth's complex tapestry of life called biological diversity. We do not know which are the critical threads that hold together the magical system of oxygen, water, nutrients, food webs, and climate that sustain life on Earth, but when each loss is permanent, there is no turning back.
Scientists are worried about the future survival and well-being of humans on a planet whose life-support systems are being eroded and changed so rapidly. But where is the public outcry, the mandate for action to stem the loss of biodiversity? We have learned from the debate on global climate change that even when there is widespread and convincing scientific evidence of impending environmental danger, the public does not rise automatically to demand a political response.
Americans have lived with messages about environmental Armageddon since the first Earth Day, and they continue to be bombarded with fearful messages ranging from water pollution to destruction of the rain forests. How do we reconnect the American public with the natural world and engage its involvement in stemming the biodiversity crisis? In this paper, we discuss the context of biodiversity as a public issue and how Americans perceive it, and we recommend approaches for increasing public awareness and action.
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Biodiversity:
Concept and Context
Scientists coined the term biodiversity in 1986 to describe the diversity of life and life systems on Earth and as a way to focus growing concern and expertise within the scientific community on the high rate of extinctions throughout the world. After more than a decade of use within scientific and environmental circles, biodiversity is commonly defined as the diversity of genes, individuals, species, and habitats on Earth. This definition, however, fails to convey the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence and ecological processes, which most conservation biologists also associate with the term. In the environmental community, the term biodiversity has been adopted as a shorthand description for the variety of species in an ecosystem, a definition that frustrates those who seek to convey a richer and more complex meaning with the word.
In retrospect, we can only wish that some linguists had been among the scientists involved in planning the first National Forum on Biodiversity in 1986. The word describes a scientific construct; it was not part of common English then, nor is it now. Biodiversity is both a challenging concept and a difficult word around which to design a public-education strategy. It requires explanation. It is simultaneously a cause and a scientific term (Takacs 1996), and it suffers from carrying both meanings. Terms like clean water and safe sex are elegantly simple and easy for the public to grasp, having common meanings and adjective-noun structure. Biodiversity, unfortunately, is not a user-friendly word. In an age of sound bites and slogans, the word provides us with a challenging starting point for public education.
Focus-group research commissioned by the Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC) in 1995 (Belden and Russonello 1995) revealed that the word biodiversity communicates different types of life, but it does not imply other key concepts surrounding biological diversity, such as interconnectedness and ecological relationships. A more familiar term, ecosystem, was used by focus-group participants, who understood “eco” to refer to the environment and “system” to the interconnected parts.
Champions of the word biodiversity need to link the term to the other concepts that help define its implications. The 1996 CCMC Biodiversity Poll (Belden and Russonello 1996) showed that only one in five Americans has an awareness of the term biological diversity, but once it is explained to them, Americans overwhelmingly express support for the concept of protecting habitats and species, at least superficially. In addition, many Americans easily grasp the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence of life. This alone is an encouraging foundation for public education.
A Nexus for Action, or a Common Component of Multiple Action Agendas?
Almost every environmental issue embraces some aspect of biodiversity, but most environmental-policy and activist groups do not focus their work through the lens of biodiversity. Biodiversity provides valuable scientific justification for
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protecting wilderness, large landscapes, endangered species, and many other longstanding objectives in the environment movement. As a result, biodiversity has been embraced widely in the environment community and invoked in countless debates as a new reason for protecting natural habitats and species. In spite of this enthusiasm, for a large portion of the environment community, protecting biodiversity is simply one more reason to achieve more traditional end points: saving places, stopping pollution, or moving a particular policy through the system. As one forest activist exclaimed at a Biodiversity Project working-group discussion on forests, “If biodiversity will help me save my forest, I'll talk about biodiversity. If it won't, forget it!”
Unlike “wilderness,” for example, biological diversity lacks a driven, grassroots, quasi-religious base of activism with a clear policy agenda. Conservation of biodiversity, whether labeled so or not, is part of the overarching agenda of such organizations as the World Wildlife Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Audubon Society. However, no national “biodiversity coalition” or similar coalescing point exists. In the overall tapestry of the environmental agenda, biodiversity is the warp: It holds the fabric together but is not seen on the surface.
This hard-working common thread invites us to frame the educational message and strategies for conserving biodiversity in multiple ways across issues and agendas. For example, clear-cutting, destruction of wetlands, and toxic pollution of the food web are all biodiversity issues. In some instances, biodiversity itself is the issue, such as the UN Convention on Global Biodiversity. Arguably, the Endangered Species Act is almost exclusively a biodiversity issue. However, each of these large-scale policy debates embraces only a portion of the broader public debate that will determine the fate of biodiversity in the long run.
Public Perceptions and Attitudes
In February 1996, the public-opinion firms of Belden & Russonello and R/S/M, under the auspices of the CCMC, conducted a national public-opinion poll on biodiversity and the environment to define more sharply the findings of the focus group conducted in 1995. The telephone survey was administered to 2,000 adults in late February and early March 1996.
In the last 10 years, the public has consistently supported government action to protect the environment, and the 1996 poll indicated that large majorities are in favor of maintaining strong clean water (85%) and endangered species (76%) acts. There is, however, a limit to the public's approval of government action. Support for the environmental position drops off on issues that juxtapose competing values, such as an individual's private-property rights versus protection of public resources like wetlands or endangered habitats.
The 1996 survey showed that majorities of Americans are aware that species are being lost (69%) and that humans are the cause (59%), but appreciation for biological diversity proves to be superficial when such countervailing pressures as jobs, property, or human convenience are introduced. In the poll, 87% of Americans expressed support for maintaining biological diversity, that is, preventing the
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extinction of plants and animals. However, this broad support can be eroded quickly; 48% of the public said that protecting jobs is more important than saving habitat and 49% that it is acceptable to eliminate some species of plants and animals. This decline in support for maintaining biodiversity when other priorities come into play tells us that the major task for environmentalists is not simply to reinforce the facts about loss, but to demonstrate clearly why the loss is so important to our lives and our world. The poll offered some insights for communication about the effect of the loss of biological diversity. The educational messages that register the most concern are those related directly to dangers to human health and threats to habitats and ecosystems that clean our air and water. Beyond these human-centered reasons, educational messages that appeal to the appreciation and enjoyment of places in nature are also of broad concern to the public: loss of ancient forests that cannot be replaced, places of natural beauty, and recreational areas. Other areas of high public concern are the elimination of possible new medicines to cure diseases and the loss of jobs in fishing and tourism owing to a loss of biodiversity.
Making sense of the clash of public concerns over the environment requires an understanding of the values that underlie attitudes. The poll identified responsibilities to family and saving Earth for future generations as the most widely held values that form attitudes toward the environment. Other valuessuch as respecting God's Creation, aesthetics, personal use and enjoyment, patriotism, and a belief in nature's rightswere fundamental to segments of the public but not as broadly held as responsibility to family and future generations.
Thus, the 1996 survey revealed that Americans will be most responsive to messages about biodiversity that address the values of family, responsibility to future generations, and, for some audiences, respect for God's Creation. Education about the meaning of biodiversity for humans and the value of habitats will be a key to building greater public commitment to maintaining biodiversity in the future.
What Should an “Aware” Public Know?
Early in its development, the Biodiversity Project identified three fundamental educational goals for building broad public support for policies, practices, and personal behaviors that will maintain biological diversity. These are to increase comprehension of biodiversity issues, to heighten recognition of the threats to biodiversity, and to generate public support for policies and actions to reduce those threats.
Although the public has a broad appreciation for protecting the web of life, public-opinion research shows that this appreciation is shallow. If Americans do not understand the basic components of the living environment and the policies that influence that environment, they will have difficulty recognizing or truly caring about what diminishes biological diversity. Moreover, if individuals do not comprehend their particular connection to living systems and species, they are less likely to be motivated to care or act.
Our perceptions are shaped by what we experience in life, and to many Americans biodiversity (or the balance of nature) is only a concept, not something that
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can be seen or experienced. Yet the workings of biodiversity are all around and within us. Educators and communicators need to be able to illustrate biodiversity so that it can be seen and understood. For example, if Americans cannot distinguish between a pine plantation and a healthy natural forest, they will have difficulty grasping the value of biodiversity.
We also face the challenge of reconnecting the American public to the natural systems and species in their home ecosystems. If biodiversity is only something that happens “out in nature,” we will lose the ability to motivate many Americans to change public policies and behavior as consumers. By linking biodiversity and habitat to our air, water, food, and so forth, we can make essential connections to the local landscape and living systems that are in our daily experience as well as provide a basis for making global connections: We can make biodiversity tangible.
A general cognizance that humans are the primary cause of extinctions and loss of habitat is insufficient to help the public recognize and respond to threats to species and critical habitats. The public must become aware of and knowledgeable about specific causes of loss of biodiversity and the actions that individuals and society can take to address these problems.
Environmentally sensitive policies and community practices will come about only if the public can be engaged to support positive changes. To translate concern and awareness into action, the public needs to understand what it can do and then be inspired and empowered to take action. Americans have become more mistrustful of government institutions, and they are searching for solutions and actions that individuals and communities can take themselves. These individual actions need to have some direct (or easily understood indirect) effect on conservation and need to expand beyond practices like recycling, which are already widespread.
At the same time, the public needs to participate more in major policy decisions to offset the pressures that are driving environmentally damaging policies. Activists need to address policy with attention to values and the public's primary concerns about the environment. Jargon or technical language and government processes themselves present barriers to communication with the public. In summary, we propose the following educational objectives as a starting point for framing a strategy to increase public awareness and involvement:
• Help Americans recognize biodiversity in their everyday experiences.
• Help the public understand its dependence on nature.
• Raise fundamental ecological literacy.
• Help the public understand the specific effects of humans on biodiversity.
• Help the public understand its capability to act to conserve biodiversity.
• Motivate the public to act to conserve biodiversity.
Engaging the Public.
Public-education strategies for biodiversity need to be designed on the basis of widely accepted, solid scientific grounds to sustain their credibility and on the
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basis of widely held values and concerns that will engage the public. We recommend taking a broad approach to education about biodiversity, which uses the tremendous energy and activity in the broad range of issues in which biodiversity is a key element, rather than seeking to raise the profile of biodiversity as a standalone concept. Many issues can raise the profile of biodiversity when it is an obvious element, such as protection of forests, wetlands, and marine fisheries. For other issues, such as suburban sprawl and climatic change, in which it is not so obvious, we will need to direct attention to the idea of biodiversity.
Regardless of the issue, the dialogue for education should begin with easily grasped concepts rather than with scientific statistics or pronouncements of impending doom. Aldo Leopold cautioned that it is important to keep all the parts (Leopold 1978), and this is perhaps the fundamental principle from which strategies for public education about biodiversity can begin. This and similar principles, such as the value of keeping all the “connections,” can provide a framework for public awareness, through which the public can evaluate and respond to rapidly changing information and debates about policy. The concepts are far more important than the word “biodiversity.” We should use familiar terms like “nature,” “web of life,” and “ecosystem” to introduce biodiversity to the public.
Ultimately, conserving the diversity of life on Earth will require action on global and individual levels and on many levels in between. We need to reach Americans as parents, as consumers, as participants in their communities, and as citizens of Earth. Education about biodiversity needs to be well grounded in science, but scientific information must be translated in a manner that can resonate with the public. Moreover, it is not enough for the public to be aware of the loss of biodiversity and threats; the public must be given the means and the motivation to participate in the decisions that will form the basis of conservation of biodiversity. Providing the motivation for citizens to participate as players in a democratic society is perhaps our greatest challenge.
A clear and widely embraced domestic policy and action agenda for biodiversity, with tangible goals and objectives, is one step that would help engage the public; it provides a starting point for solutions, and it provides benchmarks for charting progress. Organizing an agenda-setting dialogue among leading scientists and nongovernment organizations could provide a forum for exchanging ideas and developing such an agenda and could serve as a test of using biodiversity as a nexus for advancing policy on many issues.
Who can do the Job?
To raise public awareness to a level at which conservation of biodiversity is integrated into public policy, consumer behavior, and corporate accountability, we must move beyond traditional public-education efforts that are linked to a specific policy for a short term. Legislative and regulatory mechanisms alone will not save sufficient habitat and species to sustain biodiversity, and, even if they could, we currently lack a popular mandate to enact the policies that would be effective. Thus, we must embrace new strategies that reach citizens at the following levels:
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• values and ethics through religious, cultural, and community institutions;
• fundamental literacy and critical thinking, through formal and informal educational venues; and
• awareness and participation in social and political issues through news and popular-cultural media and through consumer and health education.
The responsibility to carry this agenda forward falls on a broad array of institutional communities within the biodiversity-conservation family. It includes the policy and advocacy groups, the land trusts and conservancies, recreational-user groups, environmental educators in many sectors, scientific and academic leaders, the grant-making community, organized religion, health and medicine, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the news media, and even corporations. Forging a partnership at this scale is untested and unprecedented in circles of environmental education and policy, but the scope of the task begs for a concerted effort.
The fraying tapestry of life on Earth respects neither human institutions nor the challenges of working across traditional boundaries of specialty, discipline, and expertise. At the Biodiversity Project, we are persuaded by the daily, if not hourly, disappearance of species and by the rapid destruction of habitat throughout the globe that the urgency of this issue demands creative new responses. Future generations will not forgive our hand-wringing at how large the task is; they will thank us only if we rise to this challenge of survival and embrace our partnership with the diversity of life on Earth.
References
Belden N, Russonello J. 1995. Communicating biodiversity: summary of focus group research findings conducted for the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity. Available from the authors.
Belden N, Russonello J, Breglio V. 1995. Human values and nature's future: Americans' attitudes on biological diversity. A public opinion survey analysis conducted for the Communications Consortium Media Center. Available from the authors.
Elder J, Farrior M. 1997. Report of the Biodiversity Project Message Development Working Group on Forest Ecosystems. Workshop held 15 April 1997. Available from the authors.
Leopold A. 1978. Sand County almanac. New York NY: Ballantine Books, p 190.
MacWilliams, Cosgrove, Snider, Smith, Robinson. 1996. Final presentation, Mississippi River Project, a private study prepared for the McKnight Foundation, February 1996.
Takacs D. 1996. The idea of biodiversity. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr.
