How can we best communicate the state and trends in biodiversity to high-level policymakers? And what role can highly aggregated biodiversity indices play in this? If only we could smell biodiversity or have an extra sense to feel biodiversity. That would make communication about it much easier and more convincing.

These are some of the points addressed during the final workshop on 28 September 2006 of the ALTER-Net project ‘Aggregating biodiversity indicators for policy purposes: sense or nonsense?’ This meeting, held at the Flemish Research Institute for Nature and Forest in Brussels, brought together about 30 participants (policymakers, producers and users of indices and scientists) to discuss the outputs of the project as well as communication issues.

The ALTER-Net team presented the results of the review of selected biodiversity indices from the scientific point of view and from their value for reporting on progress of achieving the 2010 target. Preliminary interview results reveal that various species trends indices appear to be widely used and well accepted. A presentation showed that there is high potential for the long-term ecosystem research (LTER) sites to partly feed into these existing indices. The participants agreed that these data are not enough to monitor biodiversity, but that further study may reveal how Europe could make use of these LTER data.

Mr Ben Delbaere (ECNC), chair of the workshop, presented the view of Mrs Dorette Corbey (Member of European Parliament), on the need of having one single index for biodiversity to allow easy communication and promote stakeholder involvement.

Mr Guy Duke from the European Commission’s DG Environment presented progress by the European Commission in terms of developing biodiversity indicators, including the need to develop a biodiversity index.

The afternoon was dedicated to communication issues, on ways of how to communicate biodiversity issues to policymakers and a broader audience. Through a learning exercise the participants felt the importance of clearly specifying the message that we want to communicate, to find ways to visualize it, and to empathize with the target group (what knowledge you want the target group to know, which attitude you want to reach and which behaviour you want them to have once you are left). The importance of media use was illustrated with examples, including the use of humour, contrast, or even smell or music, as these are remembered best.

Dr Jurgen Tack ended the workshop by telling a story. Not just for fun, but to make the point that in the end the biodiversity message is best communicated through skilled story tellers, who can integrate measures of biodiversity in their story. It is time for the next David Attenborough to stand up!

For more information: Ana Nieto, nieto@ecnc.org.