SUBJECT: RE: Biodiversity and biophilia
AUTHOR: Rainer Muessner
DATE: 4th April 2003

KEYWORDS: Biodiversity resources, conservation, biophilia, quality of life, environmental education.

SUMMARY: The author agrees with the importance of biophilia as a factor for conserving biodiversity and stresses the need to improve the methodology and effectiveness of environmental education.

I very much like Allan's contribution that brings the discussion to that very difficult field of intangible values of biodiversity and the 'human bond with other species', called biophilia.

He mentioned correctly that biophilia (as a word or concept) is not very well known. Some research done more than 10 years after Rio has shown that less than 20% of people have heard about biodiversity or could explain (very roughly) what it is. If it is difficult to bring a concept such as biodiversity to peoples' minds, even with some strong arguments in fields that are tangible like processes and services (see earlier discussion), discussing biophilia with people on the street is even more difficult. Biophilia sounds very 'philosophical', even if people still have the 'human bond with nature'. Even so it is a very important point in the chain of argumentation as to why to protect biodiversity.

To get the concept across to peoples' minds (and feelings of course) it might be useful to link it to another term that is very well known in all classes of society and that is 'quality of life'. For some people, quality of life is only defined by the number of holidays they can afford per year or the distance to the next shopping centres, but listening to the screams of swifts also belongs to the quality of life of a lot of people. It is then a question of whether people are aware of that fact, or if there are persons that make them aware (i.e. some kind of environmental education).

Environmental education is too often seen from the scientific point of view as practical nature conservation work and not understood as a subject for research. But scientific research is needed to improve biodiversity protection in the long run. It is my strong belief that peoples' attitudes (and the adjusted value systems) concerning nature in general and biodiversity in particular play a central role in biodiversity conservation.

To pick up Martin Sharman's call not to end a contribution without commenting on the strategically important research topics I would like to add to his list the need for research to improve the methodology and effectiveness of environmental education to mediate the concept of biodiversity.

A contribution by:

Rainer Muessner
CIMAR
Rua do Campo Alegre, 823
4150 - 180, Porto
Portugal