Some Big Questions
Many environmental campaigns - whether initiated by government, business or non-governmental organisations - are targeted at encouraging people to modify their behaviour slightly in order to help address some specific problem. We are urged to do a range of things - from using biodegradable carrier bags to switching our television off at the socket. These campaigns are often successful, particularly where they simultaneously appeal to peoples’ immediate self-interest.
But the question underlying the material on this site is: Do these piecemeal approaches to trying to address particular problems add up to a proportional response to the huge environmental challenges that we face?
If you answer ‘yes’ to this question, then the content of this site may help to prompt you to reflect on where you derive this confidence from - and will provide you with an opportunity to persuade others of this point-of-view.
If you answer ‘no’, you may be led to a follow-up question:
“Do these piecemeal approaches nevertheless offer the best vehicle we have for encouraging us all, en masse, to embrace more systemic responses to these global challenges?”
When I examine the thinking behind many of today’s environmental campaigns, I am left with the feeling that this last question isn’t given enough thought.
But the questions posed on this site aren’t focused solely on critiquing current approaches to environmental campaigning. They also begin to interrogate a possible alternative. This alternative is based on a set of questions of its own; questions which strike to the heart of who we are as individuals, what we value, and the nature of our relationship with the environment. By ‘environment’, I do not just mean tropical rainforests and endangered birds, but just about everything in our surroundings - other people, living things, and places.
These questions include:
- What determines the extent to which our sense of ’self’ includes elements of the environment? How prevalent is such connection with nature?
- When our sense of self includes elements of the environment, how do we behave differently towards these elements?
- How do people construct their sense of self? What can environmentalists learn from the advertising industry, and from psychologists?
- Whilst environmentalists often draw attention to our practical dependency upon the environment (for food, water, economic welfare, etc.), do we also have a psychological dependency?
- If we derive our self-identities in part from what we consume, how is this important in moving towards reduced consumption?
A note on prejudice
Exploring these questions requires a vocabulary with which many hard-nosed campaigners will feel uncomfortable. But before you dismiss questions about our ‘love for nature’ or our ’sense of self’ as flaky, reflect for a moment on how an industry that is obliged to be very pragmatic - the advertising industry - has long been working with ideas of love and self-identity in the course of persuading us to buy particular brands of, for example, running shoe. Without in any way prejudging the value of an alternative approach to environmental campaigning, we must not allow prejudice about vocabulary get in the way of asking whether we can be doing things in a more effective way.
About this site
This site was constructed by me, Tom Crompton, a member of WWF-UK staff. I have been prompted to put it together by a lively debate within the organisation about why WWF ascribes value to the things that it works to protect.
Clarity on this is important for several reasons. It is important if we are to build lasting relationships with our supporters; it is critical if we are to help to ensure that staff themselves feel fulfilled in their work; and, most importantly, it is probably of utmost importance if we are to work effectively to encourage our various stake-holders to choose to live more sustainably. It is for this last reason in particular that many of the questions raised on this site strike to the heart of the environmental debate generally.
This site is intended to help catalyse this debate more publicly. So, please, join in through the comments boxes. You can subscribe either to the site (in which case you will receive new posts by email) or to specific discussions on posts that interest you (in which case you will receive an email update whenever new comments have been made on a post you have expressed an interest in).
My hope is that many people’s views will come to be expressed here. Those of WWF-UK employees do not necessarily reflect the positions of the organisation. Rather, they will hopefully represent an open and honest attempt by the individuals involved to engage in a discussion which, despite being one of the most critical we can be having at this point in history, is so rarely aired: what do we value about nature, and what sort of relationship should we be forging with it?
