environmental awareness in latvia - or lack of it? · rachel carson (1907–1964) • humans would...
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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.”
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