Imbalances in attitudes of European citizens towards biodiversity: Did the communication of the European Biodiversity Strategy work?

Abstract

The European Union is the forefront supra-national Institution leading worldwide the environmental and biodiversity conservation strategy evolution. However, European citizens appear as poorly aware of the core relative concepts and policies within the EU’s territory. This paper examines whether: (1) there are ‘imbalances’ in Europeans’ attitudes towards biodiversity between the Member States and more specifically between formal or informal country-groups (e.g. the Med 7 or the Nordic Council/Baltic Assembly); (2) the European Biodiversity Strategy is effective in achieving the goal of increasing people awareness and engagement as predicted in its own formally ratified resolutions; and, (3) information from Google Trends-based conservation culturomics techniques and public opinion Eurobarometer surveys is comparable and converges quantitatively. Large data sets of ca 40 nominal, ordinal, and count variables were analyzed using General and Generalized Linear Models to identify those which form a coherent and significant explanatory scheme. It is suggested that the communication of the European Biodiversity strategy should be re-oriented towards processes, risks, benefits, and costs to people to give a new breath to the incumbent conservation narrative.