This is a proud sister post 🙂
One of my brothers is studying his PhD and in amongst his regular research, he recently co-published a paper on how culture impacts levels of biodiversity conservation spending.
 |
| Photo: Chris Greenhow |
I’ll let his words speak for themselves on this occasion:
From the article
“Cultural traits and social metrics of modernization correlated positively with national spending on conservation. The global distribution of this spending culture was poorly aligned with the distribution of biodiversity. Specifically, biodiversity was greater in the tropics where cultures tended to spend relatively less on conservation and tended to have higher collectivism, formalized and hierarchical leadership, and weaker governance.”
From my brother’s post on Facebook:
“We examined international variation in biodiversity conservation spending, biodiversity and cultural organisation to establish trends and provide implications for biodiversity conservation professionals.
We found, cultures we typically call ‘westernised’ (Australia, USA etc.) spend more on protecting as many species of birds, whales and cuddly things as possible (biodiversity conservation, that is). But, the larger portion of biodiversity is found in cultures of a more ‘eastern’ orientation (Brazil, Indonesia, China etc.) who spend less on biodiversity conservation.
This mismatch between spending on biodiversity conservation and the location of biodiversity is important. Specifically, conservation solutions derived in ‘westernised’ countries may not fit the cultural context of ‘easternised’ countries where the larger share of biodiversity is located.
To be effective internationally, biodiversity conservationists need account for the cultural context when planning measures to protect and maintain species.”
To read the whole article, head to: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12720/abstract