Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi, I'm a biologist specializing in conservation of biodiversity.
For the last 16 years I've worked here in the Amazon,
whose forests and rivers have more animal and plant species
than any other place known to man.
But my mission in these next 10 minutes is to convince you
that the challenges that biodiversity conservation faces
will demand that we have much greater knowledge
about one species in particular: our own.
Conservationists are worried
about five big threats to biodiversity:
loss of habitats, invasive species,
excessive logging, pollution and population growth.
These threats are apparently not related to one another,
but they have something in common;
they are all a result of human behavior.
So, one priority for biodiversity conservation
should be to understand, predict and change human behavior.
But what happens is that the ones who have been dealing with conservation
are biologists and other professionals who aren't trained
to research and influence human behavior.
On the other hand, social scientists and many other professionals
who are capable of understanding and influencing human behavior
haven't traditionally been involved with conservation.
Conservation has been using two main strategies
to influence human behavior:
laws, creating protected areas, for example;
and money, through tax breaks, penalties, etc.
But is our behavior only influenced
from above, by coercion, when it concerns our money?
Psychological theory says that our behavior is also determined by
the social context and personal issues,
our beliefs, prejudices, emotions, fear, pleasure...
I've been researching how these factors determine human behavior,
the behavior of killing the jaguar.
Men kill jaguars
because jaguars bring economic loss in killing cattle.
So, in order to prevent this behavior of killing jaguars,
we just have to prevent the money loss: either by preventing jaguars from attacking cattle,
which could be done through management techniques, among other measures,
or by providing producers financial compensation for their losses.
That means ecology and economy alone could handle the problem.
Social and personal factors won't be taken into account.
But, I've just defended a thesis,
in which I propose that the relationship between people and jaguars
goes beyond economic and ecological rationality.
The first evidence of that comes from the historical record of this relationship.
From pre-historical paintings to indigenous rituals,
accounts of early explorers, paintings,
literary classics, children's literature,
even our current 50-real bill,
no other species has been that present,
sometimes celebrated, sometimes hunted,
in this long history of love and hate, of fascination and fear.
And in order to understand what people think and feel nowadays about jaguars,
I have evaluated more than 1100 children and young people in rural and urban environments,
in the Amazon, in the Pantanal and in the city of São Paulo.
I've interviewed more than 600 rural producers, large ones and small ones,
in the Amazon and in the Pantanal.
I used theories and methods of social psychology and psychometrics,
and that's how I, a biologist, have had a rough ride playing the social scientist,
until I ended up becoming one.
Results show that the jaguar is the species about which
most people have some opinion,
which could be positive or negative,
or even both at the same time.
And most children and young people say they like it most or they like it least.
Regardless of the socio-economical context, from the poor and rural Amazon
to urban and privileged São Paulo,
the jaguar is definitely the "Top of Mind" and "Top of Heart" species.
Everybody knows it and almost everybody either likes it or dislikes it.
But where does all this notoriety come from?
Is it maybe from the direct observation of this beauty?
Unlikely, since the jaguar is one of the most difficult animals to catch a glimpse of in nature.
When you do see it, it's just a flash and then it's gone, and only its tracks are left behind.
So, could it be because of the economic losses that it causes?
The jaguar does kill cattle,
but we have to look at things in perspective.
On average, from 1% to 2% of the cattle herd is lost to the jaguar,
diseases and other causes kill more,
but the jaguar is always the one who is blamed.
About jaguars attacking humans,
again we have to look at things in perspective.
No one is afraid of a little mosquito,
but a little mosquito kills millions of people around the world by transmitting malaria.
But is there anyone here who knows how many deadly jaguar attacks have been registered in Brazil,
spontaneous ones, not provoked, on human beings?
Just one, and it happened recently.
It was in the Pantanal, a fisherman was sleeping in his tent,
on the shore of the Paraguai river, the jaguar ripped the tent and bit him in his head.
One story!
Now, there are stories and stories about jaguars that people love to tell.
The jaguar is an animal that doesn't appear very easily.
What people feel and think about jaguars
has less to do with their concrete experiences
than with what they hear from others,
from friends, from family, from home, from their social context.
Maybe a sociologist would say that the vision
that people have of the jaguar is constructed.
People kill jaguars because of their opinion about them,
but they kill also because of the so-called social rules,
because they believe that killing a jaguar is a socially accepted tradition,
that everybody does it.
The producer thinks like this:
"If my neighbors kill it, then that's the natural thing to do,
then I'm going to kill it, too".
That's how we work.
We tend to go with the flow.
The good news is:
this aspect of ourselves can be mobilized
in a communication campaign.
A study has evaluated the effectiveness of different messages
to convince guests in a hotel to save water.
The message with a call for sustainability said:
"Conserve water for the good of the next generations".
The message with a call for social rules said:
"75% of our guests conserve water".
Guess which one was more effective?
The one which called for social rules.
A lot of people going with the flow.
The problems of conservation are complex
and will demand from us a more integrated vision,
iIntegrated on three levels.
I'm going to use a quotation to explain these levels.
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love,
we love only what we know,
and we know only what we're taught".
If we know only what we're taught,
then education and communication are important.
Information alone doesn't always give the right motivation
to adopt a new behavior,
but lack of information is almost always an obstacle
to behavioral change.
To correct prejudice and lack of knowledge about jaguars,
the Escola da Amazônia, a project of which I'm the coordinator,
has developed and distributes the "Guia de Convivência: Gente e Onças" (Coexistence Guide: Jaguars and People)
In communication, it is not only the content that is important,
but also from where the information comes.
When the coexistence guide comes to the producer through his son,
who has received the guide at the community's school, the effect is greater
than when the book comes through an environmental organization,
as it usually does.
That happens because the producer understands that a community institution
which he knows and respects, has embraced the cause,
and because the information is coming horizontally
through the informal social network to which he belongs,
instead of coming from above.
Integrating these actions like this,
we've managed to reduce, among rural producers
from the Amazon agricultural borders in the north of Mato Grosso,
the perception that everyone kills jaguars.
We love only what we know
and knowledge comes from research.
Conservation of biodiversity is about the interface
between the biological world and the human being.
Research in conservation must be interdisciplinary.
The natural sciences, biology, ecology, are all necessary
but they are not enough.
The social sciences are also needed.
Since we're going to preserve only what we love,
the Escola da Amazônia has created a charismatic mascot: Sassá, the Jaguar,
who brings children and young people from the agricultural borders in the Amazon
to get to know the forest and see how beautiful and fun it is.
And if we're only going to preserve what we love
we're going to have to talk about love, too.
But scientists have trouble talking about feelings.
Science is based on reason, and emotion is the enemy of reason.
Scientists and environmentalists, when communicating with the public,
talk rationally.
When they talk about garbage, for example, they use numbers.
"Did you know that plastic takes over 450 years to decompose?"
"Wow!"
But is it because of those 450 years that you don't throw any garbage on the beach, for example?
"Oh, if it were only 440 years..."
You don't do it because garbage on the beach is ugly, you don't like it.
The jaguar has, sure, its ecological and economic value,
but we don't need material reasons
not to want them to disappear.
We don't want them to disappear
also because they are a part of our culture,
because we like the jaguar, we find it beautiful,
and because we think that leading a species to extinction
is morally reprehensible, wrong, from the ethical point of view.
And I think also because we think that...
knowing that in a forest near your house
there are jaguars, birds and butterflies, is a sign of quality of life,
even if you never see them.
You don't need scientific reasons
to respect your neighbors, do you?
You respect them for citizenship.
In the same way, we can respect every other species for citizenship,
environmental citizenship.
Of course things like aesthetics, ethics, are subjective,
vary from person to person.
The ethical consideration that we have towards the jaguars, for example,
gives comfort to our urban lives.
It's different for the rural producer,
who's fighting to survive,
and sees his little cow, his only cow, his source of income,
being eaten by a jaguar.
In the end, all these things also depend on the quality of life of each one.
Talking about quality of life for all species
will be a lot easier
when every person's quality of life is ensured.
Thank you.