Dr Matt Mcglone Tells Network To Act As If There is a Biodiversity Crisis
Dr Matt McGlone, Science leader at Landcare Research, gave his Keynote address to the annual Network AGM. The title of his talk was: The NZ Biodiversity crisis: symbolic gestures, imaginary friends and real lossDr McGlone focussed on three key issues: Biodiversity loss in NZ (the fact that we have already messed things up over generations and that the public appear to be unaware of the current crisis); the many symbolic gestures that pretend to or apparently address the problem but fail (such as getting out and doing it, killing pests unless part of an island or mainland island programme, attending international workshops and conferences and planning without budgets); and finally our imaginary friends (such as using ecosystem services to promote biodiversity conservation, urban biodiversity initiatives and the focus on climate change related biodiversity losses).
He explained that worrying about current losses in biodiversity should be far more pertinent to NZers rather than thinking about a future changed climate which might even have an economic upside. When people say that “looking after NZ’s biodiversity is a bottomless pit” they could easily be saying the same about climate change but which issue is more urgent in the NZ context?
He suggested we could learn a thing or two from Karl Rove (former Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush) by making sure of your core supporters, not wasting time on those who will never support you, using negatives more (as they work 10 times better than positives) and attacking opponents where they feel confident and strong.
He suggested that we must behave in such a way as to demonstrate that there is a crisis, reduce ignorance, aggressively prioritise and monitor and analyse our outcomes. We must also mobilise the masses (we can do something about ignorance as the Network has shown via its website) and find knowledge solutions for people (we have the best ever informed cohort of retirees and school leavers). His final suggestion was for an autonomous Volunteer Biodiversity Corps providing a wide range of tasks for the volunteers (from physical to intellectual).
To finish off he reminded us again of the need to start by making government agencies fully aware of the risk of losing NZ’s unique biodiversity.
Posted: 06/10/2007