Five principles to leverage the humanistic values for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation

 Minh-Hoang Nguyen
Phenikaa University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7520-3844

May 18, 2024

“*Grand conclusion: The report is still completely honest, trustworthy, and ethical, even though the data are fabricated and measurements are falsified. [...]”

—In “GHG Emissions”; The Kingfisher Story Collection [1]

[PERSPECTIVE]

The world has seen its environmental disasters unfold, as evidenced by climate crisis and biodiversity losses. The problem has passed the point of no return as the consequences of anthropogenic activities. In Nature’s World View (Volume 577, 295, 2020), Shah asserted that global environmental issues need not only natural sciences but also social sciences and humanities to be tackled. Written on the Vietnam Science and Technology Day and based on our experiences of doing research, editing, reviewing, and helping young scholars, we would like to propose five principles that can help leverage the power of humanities and social sciences in building an eco-surplus culture. Culture is critical for promoting biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation [2].

Principle 1: Efficient science communication is required. Multi-dimensional transmissions will be needed when it comes to tackling the grave problem of ecological destruction and climate change.

Principle 2: In many cases, delivering a key message needs to be more broadly accessible than strict and terse prose. For instance, allegorical fables or satire could help smooth out the roughness of dry and intimidating environmental warnings, making them more engaging with broader audiences. Efforts such as climate fiction (cli-fi) and eco-horror must be integrated into a broader range of communication solutions.

Principle 3: Science communications in combatting climate change and environmental degradation should engage younger generations of our planet’s inhabitants, including children. For children, fables with key protagonist characters being lovely animals will transmit serious messages in less intimidating and, thus, more memorable ways.

Principle 4: The dangerous trajectories of Earth’s environmental destruction and climate crisis have demonstrated critical problems in humankind’s responses—perhaps failures, more accurately—to their self-created crises. These failures and predictions of their consequences need to be reminded, preferably in a creative, brain-twisting, symbolic, and humorous fashion, to avoid a doomerism perspective.

Principle 5: Without humans fixing their self-created crisis, this karma process will soon teach humans extremely tough lessons. Therefore, human proactiveness in seeking and embracing solutions must be promoted and facilitated through continuous science and science communication innovations.

Each of the five principles can be utilized separately or as a combination depending on the situation of the users (e.g., goals and existing conditions). We predict that a society that can capitalize on more principles will be more likely to establish a cultural system that nurtures their prosperity on environmental sustainability.

The detailed structural diagram that we show in the following figure could serve as an indicative usage of the five principles presented above.


Figure 1. Indicative usage of the five principles (drawn by the author).


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*Editorial Note: The perspective paper’s author, Dr. Minh-Hoang Nguyen, contributed to celebrating the Vietnam National Science and Technology Day (May 18). On this occasion, Dr. Nguyen is awarded the “2023 Outstanding Scientist” title by Phenikaa University’s President (Decision No. 1067/QD-DHP-KHCN, dated May 14, 2024) for his contribution to the world’s scholarly communities.

References

[1] Vuong QH. (2022). The Kingfisher Story Collection. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG2NNHY6

[2] Nguyen MH, Jones TE. (2022). Building eco-surplus culture among urban residents as a novel strategy to improve finance for conservation in protected areas. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 426. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01441-9