Conference Agenda

Biodiversity means many things, and for this reason, the concept of biodiversity can be described as multifaceted, multidimensional, polysemic, polyvalent, versatile, and open: Sahotra Sarkar recognizes that the concept is "remarkably vague" (Sarkar, 2002), Carlos Santana, who advocates for the elimination of the term, argues that biodiversity is a "slippery concept" (Santana, 2014).

My aim is to investigate whether this vagueness in defining the concept of biodiversity, mainly due to its complexity, is a problem or rather a strength, especially in the socio-political context. In fact, the plurality of meanings can contribute to enhance the "integrative power"(Toepfer, 2019) of the concept. Indeed, “biodiversity” is a “performative” (Casetta,2019) concept; that is, it can link together heterogeneous discourses, adapt to changing situations and contexts, and mediate between disciplinary boundaries considering scientific facts, ethical-moral issues, cultural views, and political, social, and economic matters. So, investigating the various ways of defining, describing, and representing biodiversity can be helpful to its broader and more complete understanding by the general public. This can be a basis for identifying ways to make the issue of conservation more meaningful and usable and lay the grounds for attentive and aware citizenship.

The monitoring of animal movements through tracking devices and environmental sensors has produced particular forms of knowing environmental change. Animals not only have become sensors in a network of data collection on their behaviours and locations, but thereby also became part of an extended computational infrastructure. An infrastructure that in turn can start to govern their lives, as technological environments that inscribe temporalities and particular modes of planning and predicting. This paper thinks through several situations of infrastructural adjustments to bird migration and nesting to trace the ways in which possible animal temporalities and nonhuman ways of engaging with the future are either ignored, cut short and erased from the subjectivities that are granted to animals, or sometimes allowed or even actively made to emerge and differentiate. Taking a lead from Isabelle Stengers’ reading of Alfred North Whitehead and drawing on Michel de Montaigne’s writings on animals, it proposes a more-than-human speculative approach to designing for and with animals that builds on traditions and practices of living with wildlife through time. Through iteratively posing particular questions of animal temporalities across different sites, disciplines and historical moments, conservationists are invited to design temporally open infrastructures for migrating and nesting birds.

Conservation sciences, born as a crisis discipline, now stand at a crossroad, facing the imperative for transformative change. After four decades, it is crucial to reevaluate the conventional crisis narrative. While this narrative effectively mobilizes action and offers hope for solutions, it also hinders deep contemplation and implies temporary problems, which does not align with the persistent degradation of our environment.

Drawing inspiration from the stages of grief, a radical alternative of the “hope of the hopeless" is here articulated. This does not mean resignation but rather acknowledges the need for transformative change, even in the face of disconcerting challenges. To address the systemic nature of environmental issues, it is recommended to expand the crisis framing to include a palliative approach. Palliative care can foster reconciliation with friends, family and environment. Could this not be an ignition to the transformative change that we require?

Rapid urbanisation, spurred by an expanding global population, poses a significant threat to biodiversity. This study focuses on the role of sacred areas, specifically Buddhist temples within the urban areas along the Henro Pilgimage of Shikoku Island, Japan, as potential refuges and habitats for the preservation of urban biodiversity. Diverging from conventional protected areas, typically distanced from urban centres, these temples are woven into the urban fabric. The study aims at discerning whether sacred spaces engender heightened environmental heterogeneity relative to the adjacent urban matrix, positing that amplified landscape heterogeneity correlates with heightened biodiversity, facilitated by the presence of varied semi-natural habitats. Using landscape metrics and high-resolution land cover maps, the research analysed habitat fragmentation proximal to the temples and across the urban expanse. Additionally, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery was used to compute spectral vegetation indices (NDVI, NDWI, SAVI), enabling the calculation of spectral heterogeneity indices (Rao's Q). Results indicated that, within a 100-meter buffer around sacred sites, heightened land use diversity can be observed, promoting a spectrum of connected semi-natural habitats with higher biodiversity. Amidst Shikoku Island's predominantly rural landscape, temples function as fundamental hotspots for biodiversity in urbanised regions, offering mitigation against urbanisation impacts on natural and semi-natural ecosystems

Natural soundscapes are a key aspect of nature contact experiences and can provide valuable mental well-being benefits. However, there is a poor mechanistic understanding of the acoustic properties that promote these benefits, the impact of traffic noise and the applicability of acoustic metrics in quantifying and potentially predicting restorative soundscapes.

To address these gaps, we conducted an online study in which N=1529 UK residents (representatively sampled for age and gender) listened to nine simulated soundscapes of UK natural habitats with low, medium, and high levels of three acoustic metrics: Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI), Bioacoustic Index (BIO) and Entropy (H), with either no, low or high traffic noise overlays. After each sound recording, participants then responded on a range of affective and acoustic perceptions of these sound recordings, along with self-reported measures of mental well-being, such as perceived restorativeness.

Preliminary analyses indicate that BIO was associated with the highest perceived restorativeness scores, along with a medium acoustic metric level. Notably, results also indicated greater acoustic complexity, as indicated by metric level, was associated with higher perceived restorativeness, even at low levels of traffic noise. These results can provide valuable insights which may inform the management of beneficial soundscapes in natural areas.