Enlisting Biodiversity: Steering Public Discourse to Win Support for Policies on Biodiversity Challenges

Summary

Discourses are linguistic expressions of socially constructed understandings of phenomena, which drive power dynamics by implicitly conveying values that may either support or suppress the interests of involved actors. Proponents of specific discourses often seek to establish their interpretation of a phenomenon as the predominant or sole narrative with the aim of furthering their own interests. This is particularly concerning when applied to complex public issues, such as biodiversity loss, in a post truth age in which alterative facts and misinformation can shape public debate and social perceptions more powerfully than objective evidence or rational argument. This paper examines how interest groups perceive and communicate about biodiversity, which sheds light on the underlying worldview, interests, and strategies behind their messaging. We examined documents from two biodiversity-relevant actor groups in Europe: political parties in Italy, Switzerland, Norway, and Austria; and environmental NGOs in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Norway. Text elements within the documents were categorised according to their rhetorical functions, including ‘warning’, ‘calling for action (or inaction)’, ‘informing’, ‘persuading’, ‘accusing’, ‘entertaining’, ‘othering’, and ‘raising hope’. The analysis reveals that political parties predominantly employ a rhetoric centred on ‘persuading’, ‘accusing’, and ‘othering’, aiming to rationalise and gain political support their stances and/or to assert themselves as solutions to biodiversity challenges. Environmental NGOs, on the other hand, use rhetoric focussed on ‘informing’, ‘warning’, and ‘persuading’, with consequences of action or inaction often linked to human impacts, to appeal to potential and actual supporters of their activities. These findings reveal the strategic use of biodiversity discourse by different actors to influence their targeted audiences, which provides insights for those interested in creating interventions to influence stakeholder perceptions and behaviours.