Wildlife – an awkward question

In a recent ecosurety lunchtime debate we explored one element of the wider picture in relation to sustainability: how should business act and take account of the world’s most endangered wildlife? It’s pertinent because most businesses wouldn’t tend to think about the issue unless there was an obvious and demonstrable impact somewhere in their supply chain.

Wildlife is a thorny issue partly because it is hard to link up all the competing environmental narratives to tell a positive story. The media’s reporting of impacts on wildlife and other sustainability issues is mostly a bad-news agenda, isn’t it? 

The latest bad news story - 'Nearly one in 10 of Europe's wild bee species face extinction', featured in The Guardian

We usually only hear about environmental catastrophes or wildlife that are under threat, as well as terrifying extinction-rate statistics, but rarely get much good news. This kind of reporting can prompt a fatalism about the planet and its prospects, just when we need a can-do attitude to drive change.

How to alter this dynamic? There’s no quick fix, clearly. But we do all need to move towards a world where the stories we hear about wildlife are positive as well as negative, and where the link to other aspects of the sustainability agenda is clear. 

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