life
I have decided to use my dear readers as a source of inspiration. As most of you probably know, I am an environmental engineer in the making (quite close to completion, actually) and my current work is related to biodiversity. I was wondering about the understanding of this term in the general public. Also, at this point I could use some inspiration. So here’s my task for you: I would like you to complete the following questionnaire and leave the answer as a comment. Please do not conduct any research before answering the questions, just go ahead and write what you think. Ideal would be to not even read the other comments before leaving your own.
0. For the record: Describe your relation to environmental topics. Are you (a) an environmental professional, (b) a scholar of environmental science, engineering or management, (c) an interested citizen, (d) a common citizen with no special interest in the environment, or (e) an annoyed citizen who can’t stand the hype about environmental topics anymore.
1. List the first two or three keywords that come to your mind when thinking about “biodiversity”.
2. What is biodiversity for you?
3. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider most precious?
4. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider most crucial to human survival?
5. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider most threatened?
6. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider expendable?
7. How much does the biodiversity in a region that is not your own matter to you?
8. How much are you aware of your own impact on biodiversity?
9. What would nature look like if biodiversity was in a state that you consider its optimum?
10. How important is biodiversity compared to other environmental issues to you?
11. How important is biodiversity compared to other political/social issues to you?
12. What is the best way to preserve biodiversity, if it needs preservation at all?
I appreciate your individual answers. Thank you.
This entry was posted on May 10, 2008 at 12:44 am and is filed under Germany, Santa Barbara, Stuttgart, USA . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 21, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Come on, most people have some opinion on this topic. It’s all over the news and hardly avoided (well, my Santa Barbara bubble is pretty good at it). Don’t be intimidated by the number and specifity of the questions. If you can’t answer any one of them or don’t want to waste time thinking about it for an hour, just omit it. It’ll be interesting to see which questions people actually respond to and which they leave out.
May 22, 2008 at 3:02 am
This reminds me of the first time I did a media research interview. I think it’s better to ask general/easy questions for the ‘general audience’ with specific topics in mind (ie topic in mind could be “how has convergent media affected audiences” but the general question asked could be “so, what sorts of media do you like?” and then it will lead to “why do you like it?” etc) *shrug*
My attempt:
1. List the first two or three keywords that come to your mind when thinking about “biodiversity”.
nature, humanity, world
2. What is biodiversity for you?
Survival
3. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider most precious?
Anything that the upper ‘chains’ need in order to survive
4. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider most crucial to human survival?
Same as #3
6. What aspect of biodiversity do you consider expendable?
I think this can be approached in more than one way…
The first thing that went to mind is entities using the issue/s as a way to make themselves more competetive for certain consumer groups who are aware of this issues (in the same way that you have someone donning an armband like “DONATE BLOOD, RED CROSS IS AWESOME”)…
7. How much does the biodiversity in a region that is not your own matter to you?
I think that biodiversity in all regions matter. But I guess you would probably know less about the other regions.
8. How much are you aware of your own impact on biodiversity?
I don’t have statistics or numbers but…I’m aware of my impact when I choose to go on a bus rather than be the 3rd member of my household to own my own car or when I’m constnatly on the laptop.
9. What would nature look like if biodiversity was in a state that you consider its optimum?
Lack of humans?
11. How important is biodiversity compared to other political/social issues to you?
This reminds me of a political commercial that I read about some time ago. Basically it was JK saying ’stuff about biodiversity’ and then it will lead to a section of the commercial that was basically stating ‘Yep, JK is a biodiversity expect’. Personally I think the same is occuring with businesses.
May 22, 2008 at 3:03 am
Although what is considered ‘general audience’ would differ between Santa Barbara and a hick mining regional area like the Toowoomba audience
May 28, 2008 at 10:04 pm
1. system in danger, , politics
2. basis for life on earth which is not only worth saving, but existential to be saved.
3. I refuse to think of upper und lower chainpositions, every part is valuable for itself… perhaps besides humans
4. ?! Suricates?
5. The species on the Red List?
6. Humans and ticks, anyway they’re much alike
7. I don’t care about biodiversity on Mars, but in my region (humans call it ‘earth’) I try to care although ‘modern lifestyle’ makes it difficult I have to admit.
8. I am aware of it and its alarming, but I have the human malady of ignorance sometimes as well. That needs to be cured with information… again and again.
9. Paradise! And everybody is naked and there is planty of pizza.
10. Can you separate biodiversity from other environmental aspects easily? I think its highly interdependent… like climate change and biodiversity is and genetic engeneering for agriculture and biodivesity water quality or air polution and biodiversity… correct me if I’m wrong. You’re the expert – I’m just a crappy student of political science
11. As a crappy political science student I have to say: You can’t separete biodiversity from economical and from social politics… there is a new survey in the works which might be interesting for you (http://www.bmu.de/pressemitteilungen/aktuelle_pressemitteilungen/pm/40961.php)
But from my point of view social politics are as important as environmental politics… but you have to play economical cards in order to get your social and environmetal work done… that’s the capitalistic game
12. Develop a time machine, go some thousand years back an kill all the monkeys… the realistic way might be: Keep trying to save as much as possible and get compromises with crappy politicians to prevent the collaps for some decades…