News about conservation and the environment can be a barrage of bleakness. As biodiversity is lost at an increasingly rapid rate, the gloomy headlines seem to herald the inevitable doom of the natural world. It can feel hopeless at times.
A new book by a Cambridge professor aims to try and address the resignation this causes by exposing some of the success stories from the front line of conservation. While there is no denying that the natural world is in serious trouble, there are plenty of environmental triumphs that simply don’t get reported on.
“You never motivate anybody by just giving them bad news, you have to give them a reason for thinking that things can improve and that their actions can change what might happen,” said the book’s author Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.
“When you look around objectively at the conservation landscape it’s true that in most places things are getting worse, but there are actually quite a few places where things have got markedly better – these are stories that don’t get told and really should.”
The book – entitled Wild Hope – is released in the UK this week, published by University of Chicago Press. Each chapter looks at an environmental victory, the people involved and – crucially – the incentives used to effect real change.
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Image: Detail from the cloud forest of Loma Alta in Ecuador, one of the conservation success stories highlighted in the book Wild Hope Credit: Andrew Balmford
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Spreading the good word from the wild
9 August 2012
A new book by a Cambridge professor offers an alternative to the narratives of nature’s annihilation, by shining a light on conservation success stories that otherwise get lost in the deluge of dire warnings.