Communication on biodiversity

Biodiversity is more than our biological heritage. Biodiversity performs vital functions and is valuable to our society in important ways. This applies equally to biodiversity that is less immediately visible, for example in soil, in water or in other countries. Loss of biodiversity reduces our quality of life, economic conditions and future options. Little is known about the functions and values of biodiversity, and much of it is hidden from view. As a result there is a lack of adequate support for the biodiversity policy and for a change of behaviour among governments, companies and consumers.

The government therefore wants to increase public awareness of biodiversity and make its functions and values more evident. To achieve this, it will launch a powerful communication, education and consciousness-raising campaign. A uniform, government-wide key message on biodiversity32 has been developed and a project started to develop a more effective government-wide communication policy on biodiversity (Combio). This project will also produce analyses of other non-governmental organisations that communicate about biodiversity and make recommendations for improving joint communication by the various ministries. The changes will involve improving the communication infrastructure, for example coordinating any messages being communicated, integrating website information about biodiversity, and tailoring communication to different target groups.