Produção Nacional
Revisado por pares
Defining Flagship Uses is Critical for Flagship Selection: A Critique of the IUCN Climate Change Flagship Fleet
2011; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/s13280-010-0116-2
ISSN1654-7209
AutoresMaan Barua, Meredith Root‐Bernstein, Richard J. Ladle, Paul Jepson,
Tópico(s)Climate Change Communication and Perception
ResumoAt the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposed ten additional species to “share the polar bear’s burden” and “illustrate” global effects of climate change (IUCN 2009). Images of polar bears in melting ice have become synonymous with environmentalist climate campaigns (Stirling and Derocher 2007). The IUCN proposal adopts the logic that if one flagship species for global climate change can apparently influence public opinion, a whole fleet of flagships would have an even greater effect. The new IUCN climate change flagship fleet includes staghorn corals, the ringed seal, the leatherback turtle, the emperor penguin, the quiver tree, clownfish, the arctic fox, salmon, the koala, and the beluga whale (IUCN 2009). The perceived value of flagship species, or “popular charismatic species that serve as symbols and rallying points to stimulate conservation awareness and action” (Heywood 1995), is demonstrated by the regular promotion of new examples. In addition to IUCN’s climate flagships, recent proposals for new flagship species include a species of frog in India (Agrawal 2004), the axolotl in Mexico (Bride et al. 2008) and a chameleon in Madagascar (Gehring et al. 2010). Despite the proliferation of flagships in conservation, their impacts on public attitudes and ability to deliver strategic conservation goals are rarely evaluated (Bride et al. 2008). We argue that critical attention now needs to turn towards how flagships actually work, e.g. how they are deployed within and perceived by different societies and cultures, and whether this produces the desired conservation outcome. Here, we use the IUCN climate change flagship fleet (CCFF) to illustrate approaches that can be adopted to enhance the impact of flagship development and deployment.
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