Retelling the Story of the Birds and the Bees in the Age of Biodiversity Extinction

Abstract

John Lovejoy coined the term biological diversity in 1980, made the first projection of global extinction rates, and 43 years later we are still discussing biodiversity and extinction in an inconsequential fashion. Extinction signs include the loss of millions of birds in the UK since 1970 and the decline in insects. Goulson summarizes in detail the scientific and biological evidence for the many species extinctions. Although most people do not notice the declines in insects, the loss of bees has been noted when bees’ use as pollinators began to be harnessed as a corporate and commercial activity. This is linked to intensive agricultural practices. The lobbying power of agrochemical companies shapes agricultural practices that directly impact the well-being of all species. Critical ecological discourse analysis of insect decline and the issues related to it is employed, going back to the famous speech given by Michael Halliday. Then corpus linguistic methods scrutinize material from the website of Syngenta, an agrochemical company. We ask whether the website of such a firm can uncover the necessary circumstances for such biodiversity. A corpus-assisted critical analysis of Syngenta’s business report, looks at computer-generated concordances of some of the relevant content words, like ‘crop’, ‘sustainable’, ‘soil’, ‘control’, ‘biodiversity’ and ‘water’. Hopefully, this study will encourage researchers to provide more indications of the disappearance of so many species, and not just birds and insects. But, to really achieve effective protection of biodiversity much more is needed.