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08 Oct 2008

How many ecologists does it take to change a word?

Posted by: Ed Gillespie

How many ecologists does it take to change a word?

No, that's not a typo, I meant 'word' not 'world'. I'm currently at the IUCN's World Conservation Congress in sunny Barcelona (a welcome respite from a grey London October I can tell you), where 8000 of the world's sustainability experts are gathered to thrash out some ideas and strategies for the next four years of planet-saving challenges. Yesterday I spoke on a panel about 'what works and what doesn't' when it comes to communicating biodiversity and the first (and not insurmoutable) hurdle really is the word itself!

As we found through our 'Words that Sell' research, what we geeky sustainability guru's say (and use in terms of jargon) is not necessarily what the public hear (like the famous Far Side cartoon 'What we say to dogs'). Research by Defra in the UK even revealed that the public found 'biodiversity' an active turn-off, negatively perceiving it as unnecessarily complex. That's not to say they don't engage with the principles behind the term however, and as is so often the case with sustainability, once you get people talking about the term, they 'get it'. (Although worryingly when people were asked about 'Food Chains' a large proportion thought this was something to do with Sainsbury's & Tesco - which says a lot about both our shopping habits and grasp of ecology).

Funnily enough, the public really do value the fundamental 'ecosystem services' provided by biodiversity (you know, those not really optional lifestyle accessories such as 'water', 'air' and er...'food'), but they'd never call them that! And whilst they would acknowledge the importance of these, their personal experience of biodiversity is typically more prosaic - a breath of fresh air or a walk in the park. So how do we engage people more actively in conservation as species continue their slippery slide to extinction all around us?

Well, as always there was a warm response to the principles laid out in our Ten Rules. We need vivid, compelling stories that connect people's local environmental experiences to global biodiversity challenges (bigger picture), to make them feel more personal and reinforce the notion of interdependency...tigers may seem irrelevant to residents of Twickenham, but the same principles apply to conserving their local green spaces and wildlife as they do to saving large, stripey and rather toothy carnivores in India. We need to generate empathy and emotions and biodiversity is not short on great, evocative imagery of incredible wildlife - and reclaim this visual language from the mainstream advertising and marketing industries that have hijacked it to drive excessive material consumption or co-erced it into greenwash. 

In short the challenge, as ever, is to keep it simple (linguistically), provide the evidence (technically correct), be provocative and challenging (emotionally), inspiring (motivationally), inclusive (belong), relevant (personally) and do all that with a sense of humour. Simple no?! Soli always quotes Mission Impossible in this regard, when having received his task in the film Tom Cruise says to Anthony Hopkins 'That's going to be difficult', the reply? 'Difficult?!' exclaims the Welsh veteran,'This is Mission Impossible! Difficult should be a walk in the park!' Indeed. Hyde or Regent's anyone?

 

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