ECOS 33(1) 2012
References
1. Insect Pollinator Initiative. http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/pollinators/ (accessed 24/2/2012).
2. Ghazoul, J. 2005. Buzziness as usual? Questioning the global pollination crisis. Trends in Ecology &
Evolution, 20(7): p. 367-373
3. Ricketts, T.H.,. Regetz, J., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Cunningham, S.A., Kremen, C., Bogdanski, A ., GemmillHerren, B., Greenleaf, S.S., Klein, A.M., Mayfield, M.M., Morandin, L.A., Ochieng, A., Viana, B.F. 2008.
Landscape effects on crop pollination: are there general patterns? Ecology Letters, 11: 499-515.
4. Klein, A.M. Vaissiere, B.E., Cane, J.H., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Cunningham, S.A., Kremen, C., Tscharntke, T.
2007. Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops. Proceedings of the Royal Society
B – Biological Sciences, 274: 303-313.
5. Breeze, T., Bailey, A., Balcombe, K., Potts, S. 2011. Pollination services in the UK: how important are
honeybees? Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 142: 137-143.
6. National Audit Office. 2009. The health of livestock and honey bees. Report for DEFRA.
7. Vicens, N. and J. Bosch. 2009. Pollinating efficacy of Osmia cornuta and Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera :
Megachilidae, Apidae) on ‘red Delicious’ apple. Environmental Entomology, 2000. 29(2): p. 235-240.
8. Rader, R., Howlett, B.G., Cunningham, S.A., Westcott, D.A., Newstrom-Lloyd, L.E., Walker, M.K., Teulon,
D.A.J., Edwards, W. 2009. Alternative pollinator taxa are equally efficient but not as effective as the honey
bee in a mass flowering crop. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46: 1080-1087.
9. Winfree, R. and C. Kremen, 2009. Are ecosystem services stabilized by differences among species? A test
using crop pollination. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 276(1655): p. 229-237.
10. Potts, S.G., B. Vulliamy, S. Roberts, C. O’Toole, A. Dafni, G. Ne’eman, and P. Willmer. 2005. Role of nesting
resources in organising diverse bee communities in a Mediterranean landscape. Ecological Entomology,
30(1): p. 78-85.
11. Svensson, B., Lagerlöf, J. Svensson, B.G. 2000. Habitat preferences of nest-seeking bumble bees (Hymenoptera:
Apidae) in an agricultural landscape. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 77(3): p. 247-255.
12. Greenleaf, S.S., Williams, N.M., Winfree, R., Kremen, C. 2007. Bee foraging ranges and their relationship
to body size. Oecologia, 153: 589-596.
13. Steffan-Dewenter, I., Munzenberg, U., Burger, C., Thies, C., Tscharntke, T. 2002. Scale-dependent effects of
landscape context on three pollinator guilds. Ecology, 83: 1421-1432.
14. Smirle, M.J. and M.L. Winston. 1988. Detoxifying Enzyme-Activity in Worker Honey Bees - An Adaptation
for Foraging in Contaminated Ecosystems. Canadian Journal of Zoology-Revue Canadienne De Zoologie,
66(9): p. 1938-1942
15. Hardstone, M.C. and J.G. Scott. 2010. Is Apis mellifera more sensitive to insecticides than other insects?
Pest Management Science, 66(11): p. 1171-1180
16. Scott-Dupree, C.D., L. Conroy, and C.R. Harris. 2009. Impact of Currently Used or Potentially Useful
Insecticides for Canola Agroecosystems on Bombus impatiens (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Megachile
rotundata (Hymentoptera: Megachilidae), and Osmia lignaria (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae). Journal of
Economic Entomology, 102(1): p. 177-182.
17. Biesmeijer, J. C., S. P. M. Roberts, M. Reemer, R. Ohlemuller, M. Edwards, T. Peeters, A. P. Schaffers, S.
G. Potts, R. Kleukers, C. D. Thomas, J. Settele, and W. E. Kunin. 2006. Parallel declines in pollinators and
insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands. Science, 313(5785): p. 351-354.
18. Healthy Bees Plan. https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?sectionid=41 (accessed 24/2/2012).
The authors are PhD researchers at Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. Emily
Adams is studying beekeeping and honey bee health; Alistair Campbell is investigating the
potential of wildflower strips to conserve and enhance pollinators and pest control agents
in cider apple orchards; and Phil Donkersley is researching the nutrition of honey bees and
the associations of nutrition with certain microorganisms present in the bee hive. Contact:
[email protected]
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ECOS 33(1) 2012
Today we live without them:
the erasure of animals and
plants in the language of
ecosystem assessment
This article examines the representation of animals and plants in the UK National
Ecosystem Assessment, showing how they are systematically erased from consciousness
through a variety of linguistic devices. The consequences for engaging and motiving
people in the UK who care about the wellbeing, welfare, and lives of animals and plants
are discussed, and the conclusion calls for more balanced ways of representing the
natural world.
ARRAN STIBBE
Teeming with life?
In his famous essay Why look at animals? John Berger made a poignant and
controversial statement: “In the last two centuries animals have gradually
disappeared. Today we live without them”.1 There is little doubt that when Berger
made this statement, and even more so today, interactions with animals happen
increasingly at a distance: mediated by nature programs, cartoons, logos, museums,
books, soft toys, and social media with its innumerable videos of amusing animal
antics. Jonathan Burt is critical of the historical accuracy of Berger’s account but
still agrees that: “The historical trajectory [Berger] outlines of the disappearance
of animals and their replacement by signs, and the manner in which humans and
animals are increasingly alienated in modernity, provides a pessimistic vision with
which it is hard to argue”.2
Randy Malamud is also critical of Berger, arguing that representations of animals
can be positive3 - we can still live with animals in our heads through reading or
viewing evocative descriptions, even without direct contact with them. Berger’s
statement that “we live without them” is clearly an exaggeration for rhetorical
effect, and something that is more or less true for different groups of people in
different situations. For this article I am going to choose a very specific situation: a
man or woman is sitting at a desk reading the UK National Ecosystem Assessment,
in a room with strip-lighting and no windows. Ecosystems are, of course, teeming
with life, with humans, animals and plants living their lives and interacting with
each other and the physical environment in ways that sustain all life. The question is
whether the reader of the report is living with or without animals and plants while
reading it. Clearly their mind is interacting with signs in an artificial environment,
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ECOS 33(1) 2012
Abstract or real nature?
There is an assumption behind the analysis that I am about to carry out, and one that
the UK National Ecosystem Assessment4 explicitly agrees with. That ‘birds of all kinds,
butterflies, trees such as oak, beech and birch, mammals such as badgers, otters
and seals’…are of “great cultural significance” and “undoubtedly have a huge hold
over the popular imagination” (p19). A great many people care about the wellbeing,
welfare and lives of the other animals and plants who make their homes in the UK,
and that this can be a powerful force in motivating them to protect the ecosystems
that all life needs for continuing survival. There may even be ‘policymakers’ who care.
But does the form of language used in the National Ecosystem Assessment encourage
them to visualise and respect the animals and plants who make up ecosystems? Or
does it paint a lonely picture of humans living in the UK by themselves, surrounded
not by other species living their own lives for their own purposes but instead by
‘terrestrial resources’, ‘natural capital’ and ‘cultural amenity providers’? Does it paint a
picture of people whose concern is solely focused on prosperity and human wellbeing
without a moment’s consideration of the wellbeing and lives of other species?
I am going to analyse the discourse of the 87 page Synthesis of the Key Findings
report from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment as a representative sample of
a discourse which goes far wider than this one document, appearing in the other
documents that form the UK NEA as well as similar reports such as the Millenium
Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). For the purposes of this article, the term discourse
refers to a specific way of using language which encodes a particular worldview.
For example, while there may be no exact sentences that the NEA and MEA have
in common, they both use the same discourse, i.e., they employ the same ways of
talking about the world based on the same (or a very similar) worldview. Through
analysing the ways of using language in a discourse it is possible to reveal the
worldview that underlies it, and expose it for questioning.5 The Synthesis of the
Key Findings report6 (which I will refer to for convenience as simply ‘the NEA’) was
chosen since of all the NEA documents it is the one that policymakers and the public
are most likely to read and be influenced by.
A starting point in the analysis is to ask the ‘where are the animals and plants’ in the
discourse of the NEA? In the statement ‘birds of all kinds, butterflies, trees such as
oak, beech and birch, mammals such as badgers, otters and seals’ (p19) the trees and
animals exist within the sentence quite directly through the presence of their species
names. This is the most concretely imaginable or ‘basic level’ of representation,
with anything above the basic level, such as ‘mammal’ or ‘invertebrate’ being less
likely to result in a vivid mental images.7 Photographs, of course, convey images
directly, and the photographs and images which accompany the text show people
walking in beautiful countryside with trees, a dragonfly, a cow, and close up shots
of individual birds. This direct and immediate form of representation, however, only
occurs occasionally in the NEA. For much of the rest of the document, I am going
to argue that animals and plants have been erased.
48
Erasure
Erasure occurs when beings in the real
world are represented by, replaced
by, signs in text. What is erased (from
readers’ minds) is the unique nature
and complexity of the beings being
represented. Nothing about the word
‘oak’ conveys the myriad of shapes of
the actual trees, their colours, smells,
textures or the complexity of their
forms. Following Jean Baudrillard I will
treat erasure as a matter of degree
– some forms of language convey
more vivid and evocative images of
beings while others erase them almost
completely. Representations can be
anywhere on a scale of “the reflection
of a profound reality” to “no relation
to any reality whatsoever”.8 Erasure
does not just mean an absence of
animals and plants in a text. For instance, Allen Williams et al found that animals
and nature have simply disappeared from many recent children’s books9, and the
environmental charity ABC noticed that nature vocabulary such as ‘beaver’ and
‘dandelion’ disappeared from the Oxford Junior dictionary to be replaced with
technological vocabulary such as ‘blog’ and ‘broadband’.10 Instead erasure means
that animals and plants are present in a text but in a distant and diminished form,
remaining only as traces.
NEIL BENNETT
but are those signs evocative enough to allow them to visualise the people, animals,
plants and natural environments that make up the ecosystems?
ECOS 33(1) 2012
The mildest form of erasure occurs when animals and plants are replaced by species
names such as ‘oak’ (p19), ‘badger’ (p19), ‘halibut’ (p30), ‘trout and salmon’ (p32),
or their movements are frozen in two dimensional, enframed photographs. Then
there are more abstract representations when a hypernym11 replaces the species
name – ‘birds and mammals’ (p23), ‘nursery grounds for fish’ (p23), ‘a loss of species’
(p4), ‘organisms...provide us with food’ (p7), and progressively more abstract until
we get to ‘native flora and fauna’ (p48). And the complex and contested term
‘biodiversity’ used throughout the report is far, far up the scale of abstraction.
These terms at least remain within the semantic domain of living beings, but when
animals and plants find themselves as hyponyms of ‘our resources’ (p53), ‘the UK’s
natural capital’ (p47) or ‘terrestrial, marine and freshwater resources’ then they are
part of a larger semantic domain, lumped together with physical resources such as
oil, water or sand. As Norman Fairclough points out, items which are co-hyponyms
are represented as being equivalent in some way, draining the life and individuality
from animals and plants by making them part of a long list of resources.12
Then there are representations which contain traces of animals and plants by
mentioning the places where they live, but not the dwellers themselves: ‘urban
greenspace amenity’ (p51) includes trees and plants as the merest of traces in the
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ECOS 33(1) 2012
‘green’ of ‘greenspace’; ‘living and physical environments’ (p4) and ‘environmental
resources’ (p32) represent animals and plants as part of an all-encompassing
environment surrounding humans; ‘wild habitat’ (p5) and ‘wetland habitat’ (p24)
represent what Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert call ‘beastly places’13, though without
the beasts. Likewise ‘seasonally grazed floodplains’ (p23) contains a trace of
animals, for who else is doing the grazing, and a hint of plants, for what else is
being grazed. The word ‘types’ takes the erasure up a level in expressions such as
‘aquatic habitat types’ (p10).
Another way that animals and plants are erased is through being referred to
metonymically by the function they are serving within an ecosystem: ‘pollinators’,
‘primary producers’, ‘dispersers’, or the slightly more vivid ‘pollinating insects’ (p19).
These at least are count nouns, suggesting a multitude of individuals, but in the
expressions ‘wood and non-woody biomass’ (p18) and ‘27 million tonnes per year
of additional biomass imports’, trees and plants are represented as mass nouns, as
mere tonnages of stuff.
Fish are erased through taking the place of a modifier in a noun phrase ‘fish stocks’
(p8), ‘fish catches’ (p10), ‘catch rates of fish’ (p31), ‘fishing technology’ (p55), or
‘landings of marine fish’ (p2). When fish are modifiers of other nouns, they have
been pushed to the periphery, the sentence being about something else. And
the erasure is taken even further with the expression ‘fisheries’, where the fish
themselves remain in the morphology of the word, but just a trace within a large
commercial operation.
Intrinsic worth
There is a hidden ideology that runs throughout the NEA: that the wellbeing, welfare
and lives of animals and plants is not worthy of ethical, moral or compassionate
consideration. This is because, as Martin Spray and Alison Parfitt describe: “We
are accustomed to equate a thing’s...value with the use we have for it. A parcel
of woodland has timber / fuel / hunting / scientific / recreational / educational /
aesthetic value: but what of the value of it? Things remain valueless until some use
is discovered: some use, that is, for us. The uses for it that other beings have found
score little”.14
When humans pollute air, land and water, and destroy habitats, there is an eventual
impact on humans, but immediate harm occurs to the many species who live in the
affected regions. The ideology is not explicit in the NEA but occurs through nonmentioning, through erasure. A sentence like “The natural world, its biodiversity and
its constituent ecosystems are critically important to our well-being and economic
prosperity” (p5) presupposes that ‘our well-being’ and ‘economic prosperity’ are
valued goals, the unquestioned ethical ‘good’ that we should aim towards. The
absence here of any ethical good related to allowing abundant and diverse species
of animals and plants to live and thrive according to their nature erases them from
moral consideration. The following sentence: “Diversification of forest structure for
biodiversity benefits improves cultural services through better amenity value, while
increases in forest cover potentially benefit carbon regulation (p24)” is absolutely
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true but what has been missed out are the benefits of increased forest cover for
a great range of species other than humans. Similarly ‘cultural services may have
deteriorated, for example, hedgerows have been lost’ (p25) describes hedgerows
as providing a cultural service to humans who may enjoy looking out at picturesque
scenery, without mentioning the far more important service that hedgerows play in
the lives of those who live within them. Overall, the ethical goals assumed by the
language of the NEA include ‘health, wealth and happiness’ (p31), ‘our wellbeing’,
‘human wellbeing’ (p5), ‘efficient resource allocation’ (p13), ‘social wellbeing’
(p13), ‘cultural services’ (p18), ‘society’ (p24), ‘the nation’s continuing prosperity’
(p87), and ‘economic prosperity’ (p5) but nothing beyond narrow human interests.
The political idiolect
I am not the first to make critical comments about the discourse of ecology and
conservation in ECOS. Mathew Oates writes that: “working within today’s wildlife
and environmental movement can sever personal relationships with the world
of Nature... we have paid so much attention to the (rapid) development of the
scientific, ecological idiolect...that we have lost contact with our core language - the
poetic language of passion for, of, with and within Nature”.15
Paul Evans similarly writes: “...many conservationists prefer to hide behind the
language of science. But why should we be scared of poetic description? Why
should we not be concerned with the specific, the individual, the particular and the
spirit of place”.16
In the case of the NEA, however, it is not just the ‘scientific, ecological idiolect’ that
is at work, it is also a political idiolect – one which privileges in one breath human
wellbeing and national economic prosperity and steadfastly avoids vocabulary which
might question the ethics of consumerism or the environmental destruction and
the harm it causes. Both ‘the economic liberalisation of trade’ and ‘consumption
patterns’ are expressed neutrally as ‘drivers of change in UK ecosystem services’
(p26), and the harm and destruction caused by them is equally expressed neutrally
as placing ‘a greater demand on the services provided by UK ecosystems’ (p26).
The NEA comes close to expressing regret at ecological damage in ‘Ecosystems
and their services have been directly affected by conversion of natural habitats,
pollution of air, land and water…’ (p8), though this is expressed through the
neutral verb ‘affected’ rather than any word with negative connotations such as
harm, hurt, damage, or destroy. At least the following sentence uses the word
‘adversely’ to provide some evaluative force ‘major increases in fertiliser use…
have adversely affected aquatic ecosystems’ (p8), but still the harmed participant
is ‘aquatic ecosystems’ without mention of the fish who are starved of oxygen
and die because of the eutrophication. The word ‘impact’ is the most frequent
way of describing harm – ‘human impacts on the natural environment’ (p40), ‘the
ecological impacts of fisheries’ (p10), or ‘[energy and transport sectors] had major
impacts on ecosystems’ (p10). The word ‘impact’ is a noun form, unlike verb forms
such as ‘harmed’ which more clearly and strongly suggest agency (and blame).
Another way of denying agency is through verbs such as ‘decline’ and ‘deteriorate’
which do not require any kind of causal agent and make it seem as if damage to
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ECOS 33(1) 2012
ecosystems is occurring spontaneously: ‘many ecosystem system services continue
to decline’ (p10), ‘Ecosystem services…continue to deteriorate’ (p10).
slightest consideration then they diminish life itself, and all forms of life, including
our own.
Real life
Notes and References
The de-valuing and erasure of animals in the discourse of ecology is something
that I have examined before, in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), the
pre-cursor of the UK NEA.17 In response to that research, one senior figure in the
production of the report commented: “Although [the anthropocentric discourse
of the MEA] has benefits in terms of articulating the issues in terms that many
who hold real power can understand (e.g., finance ministers, CEOs of companies,
planning ministers), it also has costs in devaluing the intrinsic worth of species as
you note. For the audience we were aiming at, that cost was worth paying in my
view but ideally in the future assessments might be able to provide a better balance
here (personal communication)”.
1. Berger, J. (1980) About looking. New York: Vintage, p. 10
2. Burt, J. (2005) John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals?”: A Close Reading. Worldviews: Global Religions,
Culture, and Ecology. 9:2:203-218, p. 203
3. Malamud, R. (1998). Reading zoos: Representations of animals and captivity. New York University Press
4. Numbers in parentheses in the text refer to the page numbers in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment:
synthesis of the key findings. http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
5. Discourse analysis is a useful way of critiquing ecological texts and forms the basis of the emerging
discipline of ecolinguistics. See the Language and Ecology Research Forum (www.ecoling.net) and
Alexander, R. (2010) Framing discourse on the environment. London: Routledge; also, chapters 4 to
7 in Stibbe, A. (2012) Animals erased: discourse, ecology and reconnection with the natural world.
Middletown: Wesleyan University Press
6. UK National Ecosystem Assessment: synthesis of the key findings (2011). http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
7. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. (1990) Women, fire and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the
mind. University of Chicago Press
8. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press
9. Williams, J. et al (2011) The human-environmental dialog in award-winning children’s picture books.
Sociological Inquiry 82:1:145-159
10. see http://www.gettingkidsoutdoors.org/removal-of-nature-words-from-dictionary-causes-uproar/
11. Hypernyms are category names and hyponyms are members of the category (e.g., rose and tulip are cohyponyms of the hypernym flower).
12. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge
13. Philo and Wilbert (2000) Animal spaces, beastly places: new geographies of human-animal relations.
London: Routledge
14. Spray, M. and A. Parfitt (2011) A step in the right direction. ECOS 32:2:1-8, p.2
15. Oates, M. (2008) Obfuscation and the language of nature conservation. ECOS 29:1:10-18, p.10 and p.18
16. Evans, P. (1996) Biodiversity: nature for nerds? ECOS 17:2:7-11, p.11
17. Stibbe, A. (2006) Deep Ecology and Language: The curtailed journey of the Atlantic salmon. Society and
Animals 14:1:61-77
18. Common Cause (2010) Common cause: the case for working with our values. http://www.wwf.org.uk/
wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=4224
19. Wain, G. (2007) Feral feelings. ECOS: A Review of Conservation. 28:2:1
20. Carson, R. (1962) Silent spring. Harmondworth: Penguin, p.123
It seems that the UK NEA, as a ‘future assessment’, did not manage to achieve a
better balance. An influential WWF project, Common Cause, cautions against the
deliberate watering down of ethical values in order to have a short term impact
on policymakers.18 It argues that discourses which do this frame the issues in ways
which reproduce the forms of thinking which caused the problems in the first
place (e.g., a narrow focus on economic prosperity and an anthropocentric view
of nature as resources to be exploited). There is a perception that policymakers are
cold hearted and robotic, only responding to measurable economic factors, but that
is not necessarily so, and the question is whether discourses should encourage this
mindset, challenge it, or go for a win-win though aiming for balance.
Creating a ‘better balance’ would involve crafting a discourse which makes the
human wellbeing and ecosystem services points but which also erases animals and
plants to a far lesser degree, by representing them actively within the text as agents
of their own lives living and thriving in the ecosystems that are being described.
Geoffrey Wain suggests that we draw inspiration from a recent book which makes
the real thing vivid - Jim Crumley’s Brother Nature: “Crumley takes us up-close to
ospreys, kites, wild swans, beavers, and even bears. He reveals the savage beauty of
nature in the landscapes of his beloved Highland edge”.19
There are many other possible sources of inspiration for crafting new ecological
discourses: Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Kathleen Jamie, Jay Griffiths, Nan Shepard,
David Abram, and Gary Snyder to name just a few. The vivid and lyrical forms of writing
that such authors employ can be drawn on to create a more balanced hybrid discourse
that aims for traction in political circles without the wholesale erasure of animals,
plants and nature. It does not require philosophical discussions about whether animals
and plants have intrinsic value or not, but just writing with care, as Rachel Carson
demonstrates so well: “Dead and dying fish, including many young salmon, were found
along the banks of the stream…All the life of the stream was stilled”.20
Arran Stibbe is a reader in ecological linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire and author
of Animals Erased: discourse, ecology and reconnection with the natural world (Wesleyan
University press, 2012). [email protected]
In the end it comes down to an appreciation of life. If ecological discourses diminish
some forms of life through erasing them and treating them as unworthy of even the
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