Save the whales! Save our forests! Save our elephants!
We biologists have been bleating these refrains for over three decades. Our rhetoric remains the same broken record, played over and over again: we are stripping the Earth of its riches, we are poisoning the waters, we are polluting the air and we are overheating the Earth. Yet, the threats remain; the ravaging of the Earth continues.
We have only a quarter of the extent of forests left on our island – one third less than at the turn of the last century. Three hundred and eighty species of animals (241 endemics) and 675 plant species (412 endemics) are considered to be threatened with extinction.
The forests that we are losing are the very forests that soak up carbon dioxide and serve as giant sponges to soak up rainwater, preventing floods and erosion.
The animals and plants that we are losing are those that, together, form interconnected and interdependent units of ecosystems, which provide us humans with a range of life-sustaining services: replenishing the oxygen that we breathe; providing us with food and medicines, fuel and fibre; purifying water, regulating the climate and recycling nutrients; serving as physical barriers to tidal surges; ultimately giving us health, shelter, security and basic materials for a good life.
So why are we not able to convince successive governments and other organizations to stop ravaging our natural capital? Why do our cries go unheeded?
Because we biologists do not know how to communicate our concerns, that’s why.
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| To the average person, a frog is a slimy or warty animal at which one goes ‘Eeeek.’ So why are ‘frogs our friends?’ |
Communication is defined as the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended audience. The communication process is only complete once the receiver has understood the sender.
This means that the message that we biologists are sending to decision makers and anyone who is not a card-carrying environmentalist is, simply, not being understood. Our communications are often unclear. Like the proverbial shopkeeper who puts up a notice on the door of his store saying ‘Would the person who took the step ladder yesterday please bring it back or further steps will be taken’, we are sending a message that cannot be understood.
At other times, our communication is, simply, incomplete. We do not specify why something is important. To the average person, a frog is a slimy or warty animal at which one goes ‘Eeeek.’ So why are ‘frogs our friends?’
Inherent in each complete communication message should be three elements. The first element is that the message must contain specific benefits. ‘Save elephants’, ‘Frogs are our friends’ are not good messages because they do not convey what the specific benefit is for the receiver.
Frogs are our friends because they indicate ecological conditions or changes occurring in the environment. When useable water is contaminated by, for example, pollution or habitat degradation, indicator species such as frogs die or become deformed, thereby sending us clear signals that the environment is in trouble.
Using data covering the last four decades, biologists have assessed that the world's amphibian population has probably decreased by more than 50% since the 1950s. Some species have become extinct, while the geographical range of others is rapidly shrinking and yet others display many deformities indicating that something is very wrong indeed. Unlike humans, frogs breathe, in part, through their moist skin.
Moreover, because they live partly in water and partly on land, they easily absorb pollutants through their skin. They are, therefore, much more vulnerable and sensitive to pollution, toxic chemicals, radiation, and habitat destruction. Alarmingly, increased deformities in frogs (frogs with missing, extra or misshapen legs, no eyes etc.) have been linked to higher levels of pollutants including pesticides, heavy metals and ultraviolet radiation in the atmosphere. Their immediate reaction to environmental conditions indicates that all is not well. In addition, frogs feed on pests such as mosquitoes.
The benefits that we accrue from the Earth’s biological resources are enormous. We are used to hearing about the natural resources that we use: food, fodder, fuelwood, fibre etc. Apart from this provisioning, ecosystems found on earth - provide other benefits - services, not only goods - that often go unnoticed and unmentioned. (Ecosystems are groups of species that interact with each other and with the physical environment. Each ecosystem consists of a variety of different species – plants, animals and micro-organisms – interdependent on and interacting with each other in a specific habitat with a given set of physical variables to form a natural unit, with a web of interconnections among species.)
Supporting ecosystem services - such as
- the diversity of flora and fauna;
- the manufacture of food by green plants that sustains life on earth;
- pollination;
- soil formation;
- the balancing of gases in the atmosphere that provides oxygen for most life on earth;
- decomposition and decay of dead plants and animals;
- cycling of essential nutrients and water – all affect human health and well-being.
Some ecosystems - such as mangroves - provide a physical barrier to storms and their roots serve to regulate floods, while forests regulate the climate, making it even, providing regulating ecosystem services. Cultural ecosystem services provide humans with non-material benefits through spiritual enrichment, development of learning, recreation and aesthetic experience.
All these services ultimately affect human well-being.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment carried out from 2000-2005 presented a framework that showed clearly that through different ecosystem services, ecosystems are essential components of human well-being and contribute positively to human security, providing basic materials for good life, good health and good social relations.
The bottom line is that without ecosystems, humans cannot live. In short, in order to achieve human well-being, it is essential that we also have ecosystem well-being. This is the link that underpins sustainability of livelihoods and of development. And this is the link that is almost always missing in conservation communication.
The second element in a communication message is that it must be easy to remember. Consider the following extract from a scientific journal: ‘Nostrils rounded or oval, lacking a lateral dermal flap. Pupil oval, horizontal. Vomerine ridge present or absent. Tongue oval, emarginate, with or without a papilla. Arms short, slender. Digits slender, with intercalary cartilage, terminating in wide, well-differentiated, grooved, disks. Fingers with or without a lateral dermal fringe.’
This extract is from a taxonomic description about an endemic toad. Such taxonomic descriptions are essential in scientific discovery, but let even a phrase of the above near a decision maker, and a conservation case is lost before it is even begun. On the other hand, saying that frogs are like canaries in a coalmine strikes a chord that is easy to remember. The third element in a message is that it must highlight a difference either from other species or other ecosystems, other countries and even other available options.
Here in Sri Lanka, over the recent decades, over a 100 new frogs and toad species have been discovered. Borneo, Madagascar and New Guinea have the same number of frogs and toad species as Sri Lanka, but they are ten times or more as large. This discovery has simply been astonishing and has made our island a new centre of frog diversity in the world. The discovery has immediately increased the urgency for protecting what little forest remains.
If we remember these three elements in communication, we will fare better in our efforts to convince decision makers to listen to our message. Another key facet in communication is remembering who the receiver is. What one communicates is entirely dependent on who is being communicated to. To a politician, eager for votes, protection of the Critically Endangered Morningside Tree Frog (Taruga fastigo) found only in Morningside Forest Reserve, east of Sinharaja in the Rakwana hill range, and nowhere else in the world, would mean nothing.
Showing that destruction of these patches of forests would increase the likelihood of floods and erosion might. To a school boy – eagerly idealistic - saving the frog for its own value may be sufficient. How one communicates – the channel used – is also dependent on the recipient. A 30-page policy brief about the importance of conserving the frogs of Sri Lanka will not make the slightest dent in the consciousness of a politician, but a five to six-point, pithy presentation might. Similarly, attempting to use the internet as a channel to communicate with villagers is futile.
Another aspect that must never be ignored is that the recipient may have his or her own agenda that often, is political, driven by the thirst for power and position. Therefore, the conservation message must address this agenda. In Sri Lanka, the current rhetoric is for development, more development and yet more development. If development is to be sustainable it must include more than infrastructure development. Sustainable development is defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
This definition contains within two key concepts: 1) the concept of 'needs', specially, the essential needs of the poor and marginalised, to which overriding priority should be given; and 2) the concept that there is a limit to the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.
Sustainable development is based on the assumption that we need to manage three types of capital (assets): economic, social, and natural. Each of these assets is important, and each cannot be consumed indefinitely. For example, we cannot spend money extravagantly without saving for the future; otherwise, we will become poor.
Similarly, we cannot destroy our natural assets without facing a bleak future. The equations are simple: cutting down forests in the wet zone results in the increased likelihood of floods and erosion – in catchment areas this invariably results in siltation of reservoirs. Stripping the dry zone of its forests increases the possibility of its becoming drier and hotter. Denuding mangroves that fringe rivers that feed into estuaries changes the inflow of water into these estuaries, in turn changing their salinity, altering habitats of the food fish that live in them – ultimately affecting the livelihoods of fishermen.
Yet, much of the current development continues without heed to our nation’s natural capital.
Marcel Proust said that ‘The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ To paraphrase this, the path to conservation is not to blame politicians, but in finding a means to communicate our conservation message. |
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