Over the years there have been examples of social behaviour change campaigns (SBCC) that have changed consumer purchasing decisions quickly. The most broadly recognisable are the anti-smoking campaigns. These graphic campaigns were mostly run on health anxiety, once the link between smoking and cancer had been firmly established both scientifically and in the public’s mind. From a wildlife conservation perspective, maybe the best known SBCC is the 1980s Lynx (now Respect for Animals) ‘Dumb Animal’ billboard and cinema advertising campaign, reducing consumer demand for fur. These campaigns also used graphic images, but they were based on status anxiety, not health anxiety. Key to their effectiveness is that they focus on the actual user of the product, the ‘rich [...]

The world has seen an exponential increase in the amount of data generated each day. This has happened because big data has the power to provide a competitive advantage in the globalised and hyper-competitive world of business. But this is only half the story. While big data is big business, and often called the new oil, some systems are left to languish in a pre-digital world, opaque to effective monitoring. Whilst the regulation of most industries has been undermined in the last four decades, one is a standout, namely the extraction of wild species for trade. This is maybe best illustrated with the example of Europe. Europe is the biggest profiteer from the trade in wild species. A [...]

In 2017, I wrote an article, Want To Know Why Conservation is Failing? Read On. In the article I quoted Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer who teaches “students to use multiple perspectives in making tough decisions”. Mansharamani uses the analogy, if we think in terms of a forest, organisations around the world have come to value expertise and, in so doing, have created a collection of individuals studying bark. There are many who have deeply studied its nooks, grooves, colouration, and texture. Few have developed the understanding that the bark is merely the outermost layer of a tree. Fewer still understand the tree is embedded in a forest. This analogy regularly springs to mind as I read policy recommendation [...]

In 1871, Ferdinand V. Hayden published the Hayden Geological Survey of the region that would become Yellowstone National Park. He warned that if the park wasn’t created, there were those who would come and "make merchandise of [its] beautiful specimens", continuing, "the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities”. While Yellowstone National Park was indeed created in 1872, other regions of the USA and the world weren’t so lucky. The 15th edition of WWF's Living Planet Report confirms a catastrophic 73% decline in the global average size of monitored wildlife populations over just 50 years (1970-2020); Latin America and the Caribbean, have recorded a [...]

In an excellent article by Amy Westervelt for Drilled media, about New York Climate Week, Amy calls out the pattern of what can now be expected at the merry-go-round of events on the climate crisis, “the focus on positivity to the exclusion of anything else felt completely surreal and, if I'm being honest, a little scary....seeing so many climate leaders demand positivity, and only positivity, was more than a little unnerving”. Ken Pucker, in a LinkedIn post, said of NY Climate Week, “Voluntary sustainability target setting leads to a bevy of self-congratulatory trivial achievements”, continuing, “As long as system structure, rules and incentives remain broken Climate Week will remain aspirational and inadequate”. Be it climate change or biodiversity [...]

Having followed the rhino horn trade debate since 2012 and been actively involved in demand reduction campaigns between 2013 and 2019, I have been struggling about how to recognise World Rhino Day 2024, or even if indeed I would. While Nature Needs More hasn’t completely shelved the idea of doing more rhino horn demand reduction adverts in the future, we would only re-launch the campaign if the push to legalise the international trade in horn is once and for all taken off the table. To do anything else would be futile, like Sisyphus for eternity rolling an immense boulder up a hill for it to roll back down every time it neared the top. Hence this is likely [...]

In 2019, the IPBES confirmed that under the present socio-economic model one million species are threatened with extinction in the near future. Overexploitation for trade is one of the two key drivers of the current extinction crisis. As yet there is no evidence that the dual desires, to ‘supply for profit’ and ‘consume for status’, can be curbed. Groundhog Day on just one iconic species, elephants, shows how stuck human mindsets are. One of the most contentious wildlife trades, debated over many decades, is trophy hunting. Earlier this year Botswana’s President Masisi was interviewed over his comment to send 20,000 elephants to Germany. The reason for the ‘offer/threat’ was that Germany’s environment ministry raised the possibility of stricter [...]

There is a difference between climate scientists and conservation scientists. The vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97% – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Even for those among us who, after decades, challenge the 97% claim, and undertake their own ‘fact check’, they found the consensus is “shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists” in one survey, while another found it to be 84%. So, let’s say the ‘overwhelming majority’ of climate scientist agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change and as such they challenge the fossil fuel industry. The biodiversity equivalent to ‘climate scientists and the fossil fuel industry’ is ‘conservation scientists and the industrial extraction of [...]

In a book published recently, Future of Denial, the author Tad DeLay explores the question, “Why do we continue to squander the short time we have left to deal with climate change?” DeLay isn’t the first to lay bare that “capitalism is an ecocidal engine constantly regenerating climate change denial”. Interviewed by The Guardian, he says, “You can’t admit, as a capitalist subject, that there’s little you as an individual can do, and neither can you imagine the end of capitalism”. If you can’t imagine the end of capitalism the options are either deny reality or accept it but deny personal moral culpability – namely reject the science or commit to pseudo-solutions, gimmicks and greenwashing. Supporting pseudo/phantom solutions [...]

Anyone reading about Australia’s bungled Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) reform will no doubt have seen the well-worn phrase ‘once in a generation’. The EPBC Act is stated to be Australia’s central piece of national environmental law, covering the Commonwealth’s role in environmental protection matters of national significance. After a scathing statutory review of the EPBC Act’s effectiveness, undertaken in 2019/20, Australia supposedly has a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to ensure the country’s environment laws are working and this ‘once in a generation’ reform can’t be rushed. This ‘once in a generation’ statement is music to the ears of the stakeholders who want to maintain the status quo. They can lobby hard to [...]