Conference Agenda

The alarming decline of insect populations and their crucial role in sustaining ecosystems have been persistently overlooked by the wider public (Cardoso et al. 2011). Unfavourable attitudes towards insects and negative emotions such as fear and disgust continue to prevail (Kellert 1993; Lorenz et al. 2014; Shipley and Bixler 2017), resulting also in lower conservation efforts (Martín-López et al. 2007). In this contribution, we explore the potential of a citizen science intervention as a gateway to encourage interest in insect conservation. Together with a renowned weekly newspaper, a Germany-wide campaign was conducted over four months, combining a citizen science project with an information campaign on insect-friendly gardening practices. We examined the impact of this intervention on insect-related attitudes, problem awareness, knowledge, and behaviour. A before-after comparison and an additional control group with a total of 1124 people participating in the surveys enabled a quasi-experimental design. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we demonstrate that the intervention has a positive impact on the knowledge level and insect conservation behaviour, particularly for people with a low initial level. We conclude that the transformative potential unfolds in a target group that is initially less aware of and involved in insect conservation.

Urbanization, a key driver of biodiversity loss, also separates people from the experience of nature, and this in turn, erodes wellbeing and diminishes people’s connectedness and care for nature. Designing biophilic cities to promote nature-related wellbeing offers a way to strengthen our bond with nature and addresses urban lifestyle-related mental health issues. However, current research often explores nature as a ‘black box’ and studies exploring the biodiversity-wellbeing relationship yield inconsistent results. Using a systematic review covering over 10,000 peer-reviewed papers, this study aims to understand which nature components and their traits can contribute to mental wellbeing in the urban context. Our findings indicate that most studies are observational rather than experimental, primarily focusing on green coverage in residential areas.The effect of exposure to nature/greenspaces shows mixed or no effects on depression and perceived wellbeing, while studies examining mood states and restoration generally show a positive effect. Limited efforts are directed to explore the wellbeing benefits derived from specific components or traits of nature, showing that trees and birds enhance mental wellbeing compared to components such as lawns. Altogether, our results provide insights that can inform the design policy of biophilic cities to foster nature connectedness and improve human wellbeing.

One of the many challenge in the fight to tackle environmental crises is raising awareness among people. We questioned the presence and the role of environmental literacy to do so, and especially the power of people lived or transmitted memories of their past environment.

We studied it in the Ferlo, Senegal. Mainly inhabited by Fulani living from breeding, this Sahel area suffered an important desertification and aridification and extreme loss of biodiversity since droughts in the 1970s. We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with a Fulani interpreter. Interviews were then transcribed in French before thematic analysis.

Results showed that environmental memories in the Ferlo referred to the former way of life of inhabitants in interaction with their environment and lost species. Respondents were nostalgic about their past environment as they saw many benefits from it, and were aware about biodiversity importance for ecosystem functioning. This resulted in a strong desire to recover past biodiversity, including species once considered harmful, such as predators. In addition with sensitizing people to environmental change, environmental memories might complement ecological studies, reviewed for this work, to assure biodiversity and environmental change monitoring in the time, as the former could provide very local, precise and recent information.