Communication and advocacy approaches that influence attitudes and behaviors are key to addressing conservation problems, and the way an issue is framed can affect how people view, judge, and respond ...to an issue. Responses to conservation interventions can also be influenced by subtle wording changes in statements that may appeal to different values, activate social norms, influence a person's affect or mood, or trigger certain biases, each of which can differently influence the resulting engagement, attitudes, and behavior. We contend that by strategically considering how conservation communications are framed, they can be made more effective with little or no additional cost. Key framing considerations include, emphasizing things that matter to the audience, evoking helpful social norms, reducing psychological distance, leveraging useful biases, and, where practicable, testing messages. These lessons will help communicators think strategically about how to frame messages for greater effect.
Cinco Lecciones para Dirigir un Encuadre Más Efectivo del Mensaje de Conservación de la Biodiversidad
Resumen
Las estrategias de comunicación y defensa que influyen sobre las actitudes y comportamientos son muy importantes para abordar los problemas de conservación. La manera en la que se encuadra un tema puede afectar cómo las personas lo ven, lo juzgan y cómo responden a él. Las respuestas a las intervenciones de conservación también pueden estar influenciadas por cambios sutiles en la redacción de las declaraciones que pueden exhortar a valores distintos, activar las normas sociales, influir sobre el afecto o humor de una persona o producir ciertos sesgos, cada uno de los cuales puede influir de manera diferente sobre la participación, el comportamiento y las actitudes resultantes. Sostenemos que al considerar estratégicamente cómo se encuadra la comunicación de la conservación, ésta puede volverse más efectiva con muy poco o ningún valor adicional. Algunas consideraciones importantes son el énfasis en las cosas que le importan al público, la evocación de las normas sociales útiles, la reducción de la distancia psicológica, el aprovechamiento de los sesgos útiles y, en donde pueda practicarse, el ensayo de mensajes. Estas lecciones ayudarán a los comunicadores a pensar estratégicamente sobre cómo encuadrar sus mensajes para obtener un mayor efecto.
摘要
影响人们的态度和行为的沟通和倡导方式是解决保护问题的关键, 问题描述框架也会影响人们对问题的看法、判断和反应。人们对保护措施的反应会受到表述中措辞微妙变化的影响, 这些措辞变化可能会诉诸不同的价值观, 产生社会规范, 影响人们的情感或情绪, 或引发某些偏见, 进而分别对个人的参与度、态度和行为产生不同影响。我们认为, 通过战略性地考虑如何构建保护中的沟通, 可以在很少或没有额外成本的情况下使沟通更为有效。对框架构建的重要考虑包括, 强调对受众重要的事情, 唤起有益的社会规范, 减少心理距离, 借助有利于保护的偏见, 以及在可行的情况下进行信息测试。这些经验教训将帮助沟通者战略性地思考如何构建更有效的信息框架。【翻译: 胡怡思; 审校: 聂永刚】
Article impact statement: There are relatively easy and low‐cost gains to be had by putting more effort into strategically framing conservation messages.
Island biogeography theory posits that species richness increases with island size and decreases with isolation. This logic underpins much conservation policy and regulation, with preference given to ...conserving large, highly connected areas, and relative ambivalence shown toward protecting small, isolated habitat patches. We undertook a global synthesis of the relationship between the conservation value of habitat patches and their size and isolation, based on 31 systematic conservation planning studies across four continents. We found that small, isolated patches are inordinately important for biodiversity conservation. Our results provide a powerful argument for redressing the neglect of small, isolated habitat patches, for urgently prioritizing their restoration, and for avoiding simplistic application of island biogeography theory in conservation decisions.
The ethics of offsetting nature Ives, Christopher D; Bekessy, Sarah A
Frontiers in ecology and the environment,
December 2015, Letnik:
13, Številka:
10
Journal Article
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Biodiversity offsetting is transforming conservation practice around the world. Development activities that degrade or destroy biodiversity at one location are now increasingly acceptable because of ...compensatory environmental gains generated elsewhere. This change represents a major shift in how nature is protected, and yet its philosophical justification has received little attention. We argue that biodiversity offsetting aligns most easily with a utilitarian ethic, where outcomes rather than actions are the focus. However, offsetting schemes often neglect to account for the multiple values that people assign to biodiversity - including unique, place-based values. Furthermore, the implications of defining nature as a tradeable commodity may affect our sense of obligation to protect biodiversity. Ironically, offsetting may exacerbate environmental harm because it erodes ethical barriers based on moral objections to the destruction of biodiversity. By failing to consider the ethical implications of biodiversity offsetting, we risk compromising the underlying motivations for protecting nature.
Cities are hotspots for threatened species Ives, Christopher D; Lentini, Pia E; Threlfall, Caragh G ...
Global ecology and biogeography,
January 2016, Letnik:
25, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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AIM: Although urbanization impacts many species, there is little information on the patterns of occurrences of threatened species in urban relative to non‐urban areas. By assessing the extent of the ...distribution of threatened species across all Australian cities, we aim to investigate the currently under‐utilized opportunity that cities present for national biodiversity conservation. LOCATION: Australian mainland, Tasmania and offshore islands. METHODS: Distributions of Australia's 1643 legally protected terrestrial species (hereafter ‘threatened species’) were compiled. We assessed the extent to which they overlapped with 99 cities (of more than 10,000 people), with all non‐urban areas, and with simulated ‘dummy’ cities which covered the same area and bioregion as the true cities but were non‐urban. We analysed differences between animals and plants, and examined variability within these groups using species accumulation modelling. Threatened species richness of true versus dummy cities was analysed using generalized linear mixed‐effects models. RESULTS: Australian cities support substantially more nationally threatened animal and plant species than all other non‐urban areas on a unit‐area basis. Thirty per cent of threatened species were found to occur in cities. Distribution patterns differed between plants and animals: individual threatened plant species were generally found in fewer cities than threatened animal species, yet plants were more likely to have a greater proportion of their distribution in urban areas than animals. Individual cities tended to contain unique suites of threatened species, especially threatened plants. The analysis of true versus dummy cities demonstrated that, even after accounting for factors such as net primary productivity and distance to the coast, cities still consistently supported a greater number of threatened species. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: This research highlights that Australian cities are important for the conservation of threatened species, and that the species assemblages of individual cities are relatively distinct. National conservation policy should recognize that cities play an integral role when planning for and managing threatened species.
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) aims to provide a sound theoretical basis on which to plan for biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES). With the multi-purpose and increasing use of SEA ...worldwide, it is timely to evaluate the effectiveness of SEA practice in integrating biodiversity and ES considerations. Here, we derive criteria from the International Best Practice Principles on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Impact Assessment to evaluate six Australian SEAs conducted for urban development plans. We use qualitative and quantitative content analysis to examine the endorsed SEA reports. We identify and analyse text references related to the evaluation criteria and use word counting of keywords to supplement and cross-check the validity of our findings. Four significant results emerge from our analysis. First, while goals to achieve no net loss (NNL) or net gain outcomes for biodiversity are mentioned in all case studies, their poor specification may limit their effectiveness. Second, there is limited integration of ES considerations into the SEA reports, limiting the potential advantages that such an approach could provide. Third, offsetting is the most documented type of mitigation measure, potentially signalling a lack of evidence in implementing early steps of the mitigation hierarchy, including avoidance. This could be explained by the low level of integration of biodiversity and ES considerations from the early stages in the planning process, where there is more flexibility to apply such steps. Fourth, biodiversity management systems and follow-up activities lack detailed information to judge whether they will be useful to demonstrate NNL outcomes. Based on these findings, we present recommendations for enhancing the integration of biodiversity and ES considerations in SEAs. Our approach provides a general framework that can be applied to evaluate SEAs elsewhere in the world from a biodiversity and ES conservation perspective.
•Criteria are derived from best practice principles to evaluate strategic assessments in Australia.•No net loss goals are poorly specified limiting effectiveness.•Evidence to demonstrate adequate application of the mitigation hierarchy is limited.•Ecosystem services integration is also limited.•Monitoring, auditing and evaluation activities lack detail.
In biodiversity conservation, the prevailing consensus is that optimistic messages should be used to inspire people to change their behaviour, but there is scarce empirical evidence that optimistic ...messages lead to favourable conservation behaviour change.
Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 1325-1337 ABSTRACT: There is a growing view that to make efficient use of resources, ecological monitoring should be hypothesis‐driven and targeted to address specific ...management questions. ‘Targeted' monitoring has been contrasted with other approaches in which a range of quantities are monitored in case they exhibit an alarming trend or provide ad hoc ecological insights. The second form of monitoring, described as surveillance, has been criticized because it does not usually aim to discern between competing hypotheses, and its benefits are harder to identify a priori. The alternative view is that the existence of surveillance data may enable rapid corroboration of emerging hypotheses or help to detect important ‘unknown unknowns' that, if undetected, could lead to catastrophic outcomes or missed opportunities. We derive a model to evaluate and compare the efficiency of investments in surveillance and targeted monitoring. We find that a decision to invest in surveillance monitoring may be defensible if: (1) the surveillance design is more likely to discover or corroborate previously unknown phenomena than a targeted design and (2) the expected benefits (or avoided costs) arising from discovery are substantially higher than those arising from a well‐planned targeted design. Our examination highlights the importance of being explicit about the objectives, costs and expected benefits of monitoring in a decision analytic framework.
An increasing number of countries are implementing strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to support the development of environmentally sustainable policies, plans and programs. However, some ...Global South countries are yet to legislate for SEA and research is needed to understand the contextual challenges to implementing SEA effectively in these jurisdictions. Here, we examine Mexico's first attempt at applying SEA to assess the potential impacts of urban development plans on a city-wide scale, including those on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Using stakeholder interviews and reflexive thematic analysis, we identify and discuss key factors to consider when formally implementing SEA in Mexico for it to achieve its intended objectives. We relate our findings to existing studies on SEA in Global South countries and discuss contextual challenges that may be shared by these jurisdictions, namely: limited knowledge and experience with SEA, low trust in public institutions, and limited institutional capacity of environmental agencies. We then provide recommendations for addressing these shared challenges, which may also prove useful for countries experiencing difficulties with the application of SEA.
Designing cities for everyday nature Visintin, Casey; Garrard, Georgia E.; Weisser, Wolfgang W. ...
Conservation biology,
07/2024
Journal Article
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Abstract The motivations for incorporating nature into the design of cities have never been more compelling. Creating experiences with nature that occur every day (everyday nature) in cities could ...help reverse the fate of many threatened species and connect people with nature and living cultural traditions. However, this requires more than just urban greening; it involves ensuring daily doses of nature in a way that also supports nonhuman organisms. A major shift in the way nature is conceived of and is made part of the design of cities is required. Principles include reconsidering nature as a development opportunity rather than a constraint and eliminating offsetting of biodiversity site values. Processes include using biodiversity‐sensitive design frameworks and establishing meaningful professional engagement among ecologists, planners, and designers. Challenges include design obstacles, conflicts between nature and people (e.g., safety, disease, and noise) that require careful management, and socioeconomic and political considerations (e.g., Global North vs. Global South). Research to interrogate the multiple benefits of nature in cities can complement experimental interventions, ultimately supporting better urban design and creating much more resiliently built environments for people and nature.
Diseño de ciudades para la naturaleza cotidiana Resumen Los motivos para incorporar a la naturaleza dentro del diseño urbano jamás habían sido tan convincentes. La creación en las ciudades de experiencias con la naturaleza que ocurren a diario (naturaleza cotidiana) podría ayudar a cambiar el destino de muchas especies amenazadas y conectar a las personas con la naturaleza y las tradiciones culturales vivientes. Lo anterior requiere más que reverdecimiento urbano ya que involucra dosis diarias de naturaleza de manera que también mantengan a los organismos no humanos. Se necesita de un cambio mayor en la manera en la que se concibe a la naturaleza y cómo se le hace parte del diseño urbano. Los principios incluyen reconsiderar a la naturaleza como una oportunidad de desarrollo en lugar de una limitación y eliminar la compensación del valor de los sitios de biodiversidad. Los procesos incluyen el uso de marcos de diseños sensibles con la biodiversidad y el establecimiento de una participación profesional significativa entre los ecologistas, los planeadores y los diseñadores. Los retos incluyen los obstáculos del diseño, conflictos entre la naturaleza y las personas (seguridad, enfermedades y ruido) que requieren de un manejo cuidadoso y consideraciones políticas (Norte Global versus Sur Global). La investigación para interrogar los múltiples beneficios de la naturaleza en las ciudades puede complementar a las intervenciones, a la larga respaldando un mejor diseño urbano y creando ambientes para las personas y la naturaleza construidos con mayor resiliencia.
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