Thread by @KieranSuckling

Everything wrong with inauthentic environmental messaging in three quotes.

1. Struggling to stay on the awkward ecosystem services message, #IPBES chairman dismisses pending extinction of a million species as a side issue to human wellbeing.

I don't believe for a second that Watson actually thinks this. This disaster of a quote is the result of trying to "message" the mass extinction crisis via an ill-fitting, consultant-designed ecosystem services framework instead of authentically speaking from actual lived values.

Pivoting from long devastating summary of destruction of life on Earth to assertion that real issue is human well-being/wealth, is hard. Watson flubs it terribly.

Hard, because few people on God's green earth think mass extinction is not an existential, ethical crisis in itself.

There's no reason, no authentic emotional motivation to pivot to a "greater" problem. Most people can see the simultaneous tragedy of what we're doing to ourselves and other earthlings without needing to immediately declare one to be more important.

2. The awkwardness of downplaying the extinction crisis he just demonstrated, causes Watson to justify the pivot as necessary to avoid being seen as a "tree hugger." When you're compelled to message about your message, there's something wrong with your message. It's not authentic

3. Finally this doozy: dismissing all conservation of past 25 years. Nonsense. We've saved thousands of species from extinction, protected hundreds of millions of acres, slowed the population growth rated, reduced poverty, increased life expectancy, etc. We're still far from...

where social justice, sustainability and environmental ethics need us to be. And climate is a whole nother story. But we've accomplished a lot in past 25 years for biodiversity.

Watson knows this as well as I. So why say it? Because he thinks it will generate urgency in others.

It won't. "Give us more money and power because we've squandered all the money and power you gave us over the last 25 years" is just a terrible message. (Way too many protected area advocates, btw, are suicidally, frustratingly attached to this message).

This too is a matter of speaking authentically. When we try too hard to game out messaging strategies, imagining we're semantically jujitsuing the powers that be, we inevitably make mistakes and go down rabbit holes constructed by others (not rabbit others).

These quotes are from @bydarrylfears excellent WaPo story. It's instructive to see how he, and most of the media, covered the #IPBES story. Rather than track the forced pivot, Fears opens with the extinction crisis, discusses threats to humans at length..

washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

then closes with a gripping return to extinction in the form of porpoises, caribou, pinguins and the insect apocalypse. This arc reflects and connects with the human emotional experience of living on a planet in crisis much better than strategic "ecosytem service" talking points.

There are many ways we value other species. Problem is that Watson expressly says one way trumps all others.

Especially interesting since developing world & indigenous IPBES delegates successfully fought for a more inclusive report framework. This was jettisoned in media launch.

If the media launch had included greater representation of developing world &indigenous IPBES delegates, the message would have been culturally richer, less materially utilitarian.

See this thread on internal IPBES struggle over ecosystem services

https://twitter.com/KieranSuckling/status/1125870739821740032?s=19

@DavidQuammen, of course, said much the same thing, much more eloquently here nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…