If people don’t know the meaning of the word ‘biodiversity’

“The proof is unequivocal: biodiversity, important in its own right and essential for current and future generations, is being destroyed by human activities at a rate unprecedented in history.” With these words Sir Robert Watsonpresident of IPBES, the UN intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services, commented in 2019 on the results just published in the Global Assessment, which brings together the contributions of over 1,000 scientists from all over the world.

However authoritative, the alarm launched by IPBES was only the last of many that had followed one another starting from 1986, the year of the “birth” of the word “biodiversity”, pronounced for the first time in Washington on the occasion of a conference organized by the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institute. To tell us about it is the great American naturalist EO Wilsonwho died in 2021, who was baptized by that word, precisely by collecting the interventions of the conference in a volume released in 1988 and entitled BioDiversitywhich has become a real best seller over the years.

But what is biodiversity? Good question. If you look for a definition, you risk getting lost. AND a multifaceted concept that does not lend itself to being formulated in a univocal way, as evidenced by the many definitions used by Wilson himself over the years. On the substance, however, scientists agree: biodiversity is the variety of life on Earthmade up of plants, animals, microorganisms, the genetic information they contain, the ecosystems they form and the relationships that exist between all these elements.

The term “biodiversity” will have to wait for the historic first UN world conference on the environment, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, to acquire global resonance. In Rio 150 states sign the Convention on Biological Diversity (today there are 196) and recognize biodiversity as a global asset of enormous value to present and future generations. From that moment the term “biodiversity”, despite being used only in its extended form (biological diversity) in the text of the treaty, also acquires a political and institutional relevance which, in our country, reaches its peak in 2022, with its entry in the Constitutional Charter. With the modification of article 9, the protection of biodiversity (“also in the interest of future generations”) is added to that of “environment” and “ecosystems”, introduced with the Reform of Title V in 2001, among the fundamental principles of the Constitution.

In almost 40 years of life, the word “biodiversity” has become commonly used all over the world, not only in the scientific field. In some cases we got a little out of hand and everything became biodiverse: food biodiversity, human biodiversity, cultural biodiversity, even linguistic biodiversity. Biodiversity has entered our lives, our lexicon, increasingly taking the place of what we once called “nature”. Yet, a great many people don’t even know what that means.

The data published in 2019 by the Eurobarometer, the tool through which the European Commission surveys the opinion of EU citizens, are worrying: the majority of Europeans have never heard the word “biodiversity” (41%) or do not know its meaning (30%). In Italy things are even worse because the overall percentage rises to 76%. But the lack of knowledge appears to be a global problem, as confirmed by a 2019 Australian study coordinated by the ecologist Michael A. Weston of Deakin University in Melbourne, in which about 50% of respondents answered the question “what does the term ‘biodiversity mean to you?” admitting that he does not know the meaning of the term, or providing an answer that had little to do with the definition of biodiversity; another 18% instead answered vaguely, citing plants or animals or describing concepts such as harmony and balance.

If most of the general public does not know the meaning of the term biodiversity, a non-negligible slice of the scientific world seems to make questionable use of it. A study recently published in the journal Current Biologyin fact, noted the trend to a inappropriate use of the term “biodiversity” in the scientific literature. With a logic similar to clickbaiting, over a fifth of the scientific articles analysed, while containing the word “biodiversity” in the title, do not deal with it or treat it very partially in the text; in this way the appeal of the term is exploited to gain visibility and citations. An improper use which, according to the authors themselves, can prove to be risky as it catalyzes attention on the more marketable things and introduces a distortion which can wrongly influence biodiversity conservation policies and the use of the scarce resources available.

If the term “biodiversity” is struggling to establish itself among the general public, it is also due to the fact that its meaning is not at all easy to understand. The English newspaper noticed it The Guardian which in 2019 included it in its Style Guide among the terms that it would be better to avoid in current language because it is considered difficult to understand for the general public. It is a dynamic, complex concept that recalls different spatial and dimensional scales and requires an effort of abstraction to relate the different elements that compose it. And there’s no escaping it: complexity requires reflection, reflection takes time and time doesn’t exist in this society that is less and less accustomed to deep thought, bullied by the simplification and trivialization of contents to make them suitable for quick use.

And also the efforts of those who in recent years have worked to disseminate the meaning and value of biodiversity, using simple but correct terminology, exploiting the power of narration and trying to stimulate even the utilitarianism of the human being by explaining what “biodiversity is for us”, evidently did not give the desired results. At least until now and certainly with adults.

How can one understand the urgency of the alarms raised by the scientific community if one does not know the meaning and value of biodiversity? Simple: you can’t. The fact that so few people realize what is being lost reduces hope of being able to reverse the trend, so much so that it is considered by some as a contributing factor to the biodiversity extinction crisis. It is no coincidence that the text of the historic agreement reached at the recent COP15 in Montreal ends with an entire section dedicated to the need to “improve communication, education and awareness on biodiversity” as a prerequisite for achieving behavior change, promoting sustainable lifestyles and halting biodiversity loss.

Therefore, it is forbidden to raise the white flag. EO Wilson also understood that in his The Diversity of Life of 1992 in this regard cited the words pronounced in 1968 by Baba DioumSenegalese forestry engineer, in front of the general assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature: “in the long run, we will keep only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what they teach us”.

*Andrea Monaco is a research zoologist from Ispra