Environmental awareness in

Latvia - or lack of it?

Sandra Kropa

• Environmental awareness:

1. sending a message

2. getting attention

3. getting people to talk about the issue

• Environmental consciousness

Trying to get people to do something

• Environmental communication

• Environmental journalism

• Environmental education

Enough With 'Raising

Awareness' Already?• “Any time you see a campaign about "raising

awareness," it probably means next to nothing is actually being accomplished.”

• “Successful awareness campaigns are vital for taking science from the laboratory to society. This is especially true when it comes to environmental matters like climate change.”

• “Women were isolated from each other, and as a result many problems in women's lives were misunderstood as "personal." Raising awareness and consciousness meant helping oneself and helping others to become politically conscious.”

How you and the world have

changed since you were born?www.bbc.com

Discovered when you were 28

Squat lobster New Zealand

Saved from extinction when you were 21

still critically endangered

Black rhino

Are we aware?

• We think more local than global

Willingness to payhttp://www.stockholmresilience.org

• 4 to 110 Euros per person/ year

• Sweden, Finland, Denmark

• “The lowest willingness to pay is found in

Russia, Lithuania and Latvia.”

Where is the climate?

• Report about heat waves = global warming

• Report about hurricanes = extreme weather,

victims…

• Report about emissions = business, politics,

technologies

• Report about waste = social welfare,

payment, pollution

• Report about pollution = cleanup

Climate -

global, intergenerational, ecological

dimension

1 average American today = 2 future people

Your emissions are my emissions

and vise versa…

A Year In The Life Of Earth's CO2

Simple questions. Complicated

answers?

Sea turtle story

• 100 million years

• Eat jellyfish

• After 25 years back to their native beach

Do you know

where is your

plastic bag now?

Ghost story

• kills more sea life than it did when it was in

active use

• action on the danger of ghost fishing left to

volunteers

One story,

many activities

Environmental messages

• competitive stories

• major areas:

1. climate change

2. fresh water shortage

3. population

4. Biodiversity

• appeal to the values or set the values?

• Zoom in or zoom out the topic

NASA claims mysterious lights seen

from space…

Mistaken adoption:

Round goby story

Neogobius melanostomus Pallas

• Invasive species

• Gulf of Gdansk 1999

• No more mussels in Baltic Sea?

The world’s 7th richest country is

getting acid

• Ocean acidification = global warming’s twin

www.cousteaudivers.org

Ambassadors

“Yao Ming’s work as an anti-shark fin soup

crusader is showing real progress in China”

Rachel Carson

(1907–1964)

• Humans would not find peace

among themselves without first

making peace with nature

• We cannot appreciate what we have not seen, experienced or at least imagined

• Knowledge is not simply learned, but lived and experienced developing as well senses and emotions

Respect nature! Know nature! Place

yourself in proper perspective!

“How easy it is for people to destroy wild things

when they do not even know they exist”

“People protect what they love”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

(1910-1997)

> 120 TV documentaries

> 50 books

“Can social sciences and marketing,

which have long served the openly

assumed goal of selling us more stuff,

today help change our perspectives,

values and culture, to care ever so

slightly about greater-than-self issues?”

Pierre-Yves Cousteau

"Blue Marble"Apollo17, 1972

45,000 km

Aldo Leopold:

“Man the conqueror versus man the biotic

citizen.

Science the sharpener of his sword

versus science the searchlight on his

Universe.

Land the slave and servant versus land

the collective organism.”

Nothing in the nature lives for itself.

Rivers don’t drink their own water.

Trees don’t eat their own fruits.

Sun doesn’t give heat for itself.

Living for others is the rule of nature.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan(1911 –1980)

“There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”

André Kuipers

Thank you!

Questions & comments