As news attention shifts towards political turmoil and wars around the world, environmental topics are often pushed aside on today’s public agenda. Every minute human eyes turn away from these issues, insects, birds, plants and microorganisms living on the planet are severely affected. Forests, dunes, bogs and other habitats contribute to biodiversity protection in complex ways, and without people telling these stories, our society may never truly understand how our decisions on the use of landscapes influence the marginalised lives that share this planet with us. (Photo: Raúl Durán Giro)
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Human: A Barrier to Transformative Change
For biodiversity conservation to be effective, nature must be placed at the heart of decision-making. In recent years, concepts like nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as promising tools for fostering social empowerment and ecological transformation. Yet, studies reveal a significant limitation: these concepts are often applied within narrow, specific contexts, restricting their potential to drive transformative change. A troubling pattern emerges when we look closer at how “nature” is framed. Complex, top-down power dynamics often exclude marginalised communities and species from meaningful participation. This disconnect underscores the need to rethink how we approach biodiversity conservation.
The challenges we face in creating a sustainable society are not just environmental — they’re deeply human. We often struggle to align on shared goals to protect the planet. Different languages, perspectives, and priorities can create barriers to collaboration. To develop solutions that effectively address biodiversity loss, we must first overcome the human problems that stand in the way. This calls for a shift toward designing communications and public engagement strategies with a human-centred approach.
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The potential impacts of generative AI images on public perceptions of forests
Without a doubt, generative AI has captured global attention. ChatGPT, the most well-known generative AI tool, famously gained 1 million users within five days of its launch in 2022. Today, it receives over 130 million visits every month, ranking as one of the most visited sites worldwide.
What is particularly striking is the fast adoption of this new technology among younger users. In the UK, nearly 80% of young people between the ages of 13 and 17 report regular use of such tools. In the Netherlands, the same applies to 74% of those aged 16 and 24.
As AI capabilities expand, particularly in generating and editing images, such technologies are increasingly integrated into daily life. These types of images are now prevalent on social media and even appear in political campaigns and NGO reports. Needless to say, as AI-generated content starts to permeate our everyday routines, increased AI exposure could potentially influence how people perceive, relate to, and make sense of environmental issues and sites, including forests and the people who live and work in them.
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Waldbrandexperte Alexander Held im Gespräch mit G’Scheitholz! über Waldbrand, Prävention und Bekämpfung
Waldbrände prägen seit Jahrhunderten die mediterranen Landschaften in Südeuropa. Aber auch in Mitteleuropa werden Waldbrände immer häufiger und riskanter. Sowohl Klimawandel als auch Trends in der Landnutzung und Landschaftveränderungen führen weltweit zu extremer Feueraktivität und stellen die verschiedenen Regionen vor neue Herausforderungen.
Die Prävention von Waldbränden müsste noch mehr zur Zielsetzung werden, meint Waldbrandexperte Alexander Held vom European Forest Insitute im Gespräch mit dem österreichischen Klimaschutz-podcast G’Scheitholz!. Zwar können wir nicht alle Feuer verhindern, doch eine gute Prävention kann dafür sorgen, dass die Feuer, die auftreten, beherrschbar bleiben für die Feuerwehr. Das bedeutet beispielsweise die Brandlast, also die Menge an Brennmaterial, an Waldwegen zu reduzieren und mehr Pufferzonen zu schaffen.
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In our previous exploration we looked at how Twitter hashtags can help us inquire into emerging public issues around global events like COP27. In our rapid exploration, based on the digital methods recipes developed by SUPERB partners at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London and the Public Data Lab, we identified different ways people engage with forest restoration through keywords like #conservation, #afforestation, and #rewild. Hashtags such as #forestsarenotfuel and #lettreesgrow problematised the economic use of forests. Political matters also came up, linking the Amazon rainforest and changing politics in Brazil.
COP27 was undeniably an important meeting to follow up on last year’s Glasgow Leader’s Declaration on Forests and Land Use, where over 140 world leaders pledged to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030”. This year’s COP also saw dozens of governments collectively announcing the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP), and the day dedicated to biodiversity acted as a platform to discuss the progress of the Glasgow commitment.
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Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has prompted confusion among its users and concerns about the platform’s future. Musk’s tweets are gathering daily attention due to large-scale layoffs and safety concerns around the new paid blue verification mark. To make things worse, as its engineers are on their way out of the door, users are also experiencing various technical glitches on the platform. Millions of users – including journalists, researchers and organisations – are already signing up on alternative platforms to be prepared for the platform’s deterioration and demise.
While no one can predict Twitter’s future, it remains widely used by politicians, scientists, companies, NGOs and influencers who are still busy posting on the platform. This includes COP27 in Egypt, where Twitter was one of the main platforms to report on the event. #cop27 has been tweeted over 2.85 million times since 5 November 2022.
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Im Rahmen der ARD-Themenwoche „Dürre” hat auch die Politik-Talkshow hart aber fair am 29. August sich des Themas angenommen und über die Folgen der Dürre für Mensch und Natur diskutiert. In diesem Zusammenhang ging es natürlich auch um die Gefahr von Waldbränden und das Waldbrandjahr 2022, das bereits als trauriges „Rekordjahr“ bezeichnet wird. Dafür wurde unser EFI-Kollege Alex Held als Experte eingeladen. In einem Einzelgespräch mit Moderator Frank Plasberg räumte der WKR-Projektleiter und Waldbrandökologe mit Mythen über Waldbrand-Ursachen auf und erklärt, inwieweit Deutschland und unsere Wälder auf diese intensiven Brände vorbereitet sind.
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Dürre, Borkenkäfer, und immer wieder Waldbrände – der Freiburger Forstwissenschaftler Jürgen Bauhus sagt, dem Wald gehe es schlechter als in den 1980er Jahren. Im Politikpodcast…
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From wildfires to deforestation in the tropics, journalism brings various forest-related issues to the public attention. Yet, one of the main concerns from the scientific communities is the issue of ‘speed over accuracy’, where many news journalists fail to report complex topics without providing contextual background. Particularly in the digital age, when the speed of news is faster than ever before, there is even more pressure on today’s news industry to report forest-related issues in a timely and accurate manner.
The good news is that there is a wide variety of journalism practices that take serious consideration of the process for inquiry. In particular, investigative journalists take a unique approach to exploring the issues in depth before jumping to a quick conclusion. Many investigative journalists spend years following a single issue by working closely with scientific experts and mastering the skills to wrangle complex (and often unstructured) data to identify the links that no one has ever addressed in the news.
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Behind the scenes of a journalistic research process at #IFPM4 Registration to the #IFPM4 is open here! Many scientists wonder what the destiny of their…
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