Abstract
Communicating biodiversity loss and other environmental threats is never only about relating natural science data. How different environmental discourses are presented, how they intertwine, and what concepts of nature are implied, are important parts of environmental communication. The release of the 2015 Norwegian Red List for Species by the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre was commented on by governmental and non-governmental organizations, and was covered quite extensively in Norwegian national and local papers. In this article, I investigate the use of animals as examples in media texts on the Norwegian Red List, and the different conceptions of biodiversity loss that they activate. The examples studied in the article vary from the listing of species’ names to longer narratives connected with a single species. What they have in common, however, is that the authors use them to make the general issue of the texts more real and understandable to the reader or listener. The conceptions of biodiversity, produced through animal examples in the various media, ranged from happiness and childhood magic, to a climate-changed future, and to recreational hunting. The close reading of the examples shows that both the choice of species and, more specifically, which of the species’ many relationships to portray as part of the exemplary narrative, is crucial to the conceptions of biodiversity loss and of nature that are conveyed to the public. Through their way of both exceeding and reducing the general statement they are meant to illustrate, the examples bring some ideas about biodiversity loss to the foreground, but at the same time obscure others, thus providing insight into how biodiversity loss is constructed and communicated as an environmental problem.
Highlights
A Minister, a Cuckoo, and the Mediation of a Red ListOn November 18, 2015, the Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment, Tine Sundtoft, held a speech entitled “We need knowledge to make the right decisions” (Sundtoft 2015)
The speech was held at the launching of the 2015 Norwegian Red List for Species, a list of more than 4 000 Norwegian species in danger of extinction (Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre 2018)
The Minister of Climate and Environment used only one example in her speech, the cuckoo. She mentioned that the category “changes in land use” is “by far the largest negative impact factor for species in Norway”, but this statement was neither accompanied by an exemplary narrative, nor with any mention of specific species threatened by changes in land use. As examples provide both a way of pointing outside the discourse and function as representatives of the other species on the Red List, the cuckoo threatened by climate change enforce the conception of climate change as the cause of biodiversity loss
Summary
A Minister, a Cuckoo, and the Mediation of a Red ListOn November 18, 2015, the Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment, Tine Sundtoft, held a speech entitled “We need knowledge to make the right decisions” (Sundtoft 2015). As examples provide both a way of pointing outside the discourse and function as representatives of the other species on the Red List, the cuckoo threatened by climate change enforce the conception of climate change as the cause of biodiversity loss.
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