Nature Blog Network Future Earth: Conservation Clarity

Tuesday 19 August 2008

Conservation Clarity







What a trill..... Birdlife International et al have come up with a new language for conservation hoping that this will make life easier for its advocates. Now we can reduce complex systems to comparable components and make logical decisions on how to intervene. Ah ha.

That's the science, anyway. But as conservation is a social process guided by science, not the other way around, how far will this really take us? Who really makes those decisions? And what will they make of (I quote Dr Butchart) ".....common databases of conservation practice, enabling practitioners to share and compare......"

I have a request to make of the conservation lexographers. Can our conservation Rosetta Stone provide clear and unambiguous definitions in at least Chinese, English and Portugese of

(a) Biodiversity, (b) Ecosystem Services and (c) Going, going, Gone!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Conservation is a social process guided by science". I love that. To achieve conservation impact, it truly relies on social process - what makes people change their habits? How can scientific trends be translated to everyday people? How can people be taught to think in the long-term? Nicely put, Arjay.