Responding to Biodiversity Challenges

Project description

Objective

This project combines literature research, social science, and ethical value analysis to investigate how people respond to the “rough edges” of biodiversity. Wetlands serve as the case study. These ecosystems are rich in biodiversity but are often associated with challenges such as infertile land, flooding, fog, or mosquitoes and carry cultural connotations of danger, gloom, or melancholy. Even the beaver, once celebrated, has become controversial in settlement areas.

The project team will collect stories about wetlands from media, literature, and stakeholder interviews, and analyse how these narratives portray challenges linked to biodiversity. This analysis will allow to systematically assess biodiversity “disvalues” (instrumental, relational, intrinsic) and to develop practical tools that support constructive biodiversity discourse.

Relevance

Conservation strategies often emphasise positive values of biodiversity, but promoting a biodiversity-friendly future also requires understanding its disvalues. It matters which disvalues arise, how people react, and how they relate to values. By highlighting this neglected dimension, the project aims to enrich conservation debates, stakeholder engagement, and policy discussions. The project team will develop narrative tools such as story collections, role plays, and alternative endings that help open up non-polarised discussion and encourage different perspectives to be heard.

Transdisciplinary Approach

This project brings together environmental humanities scholars and WWF Switzerland. WWF contributes first-hand experience with the practical challenges of managing wetlands and the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. Researchers and WWF jointly design interviews and discussions, ensuring that diverse positions are included. In the later stages, WWF feeds the results into broader conservation debates and relates them to existing strategies.

Tool development takes place in close cooperation: a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich will be based at WWF headquarters, integrating the organisation’s expertise in volunteer work and policy consultancy. The narrative tools ranging from workshop materials to policy and communication resources are co-developed to be directly useful for practice. Finally, the tools will be tested in WWF workshops and wetland stakeholder meetings, then refined based on feedback to maximise their effectiveness.