Translator: Theresa Ranft
Hi, I'm a biologist specialized in biodiversity conservation.
For the last 16 years I've worked here in the Amazon,
where the forests and rivers have more animal and plant species
than any other place known to man.
But my mission in these next 10 minutes is to convince you
that the challenges that biodiversity conservation faces
will demand that we have a much greater knowledge
about one species in particular:
our own.
Conservationists are worried about five big threats to biodiversity:
loss of habitats, invasive species,
excessive extraction, pollution, and population growth.
These threats are apparently not related to one another,
but they have something in common:
they are all a result of human behavior.
So, one priority for biodiversity conservation
should be to understand, predict, and change human behavior.
But what happens is that conservation has been the field work
of biologists and other professionals
who aren't trained to research and influence human behavior.
On the other hand, social scientists and many other professionals
who are capable of understanding and influencing human behavior
haven't traditionally been involved with conservation.
Conservation has been using two main strategies
to influence human behavior:
laws, creating protected areas, for example;
and money, through tax incentives, penalties, etc.
But is our behavior only influenced from above,
by coercion, when it concerns our money?
Psychological theories say that our behavior is also determined
by social context and personal issues,
our beliefs, prejudices, emotions, fears, pleasures...
I've been researching how these factors determine a certain human behavior,
the behavior of killing the jaguar.
Humans kill jaguars
because jaguars cause economic loss by killing cattle.
So, in order to prevent this habit of killing jaguars,
we just have to prevent the loss:
either by preventing jaguars from attacking cattle,
which could be done through management techniques, among other measures,
or by providing producers financial compensation for their losses.
This means that ecology and economy alone could handle the problem.
Social and personal factors aren't taken into account.
But, I've just defended a thesis,
in which I propose that the relationship between people and jaguars
goes beyond economic and ecological rationality.
The first evidence of this
comes from the historical record of this relationship.
From prehistorical paintings to indigenous rituals,
accounts of early explorers, paintings,
literary classics, children's literature,
even our current 50 real bill,
no other species has been that present,
sometimes celebrated, sometimes hunted,
in this long history of love and hate, of fascination and fear.
And in order to understand what people think and feel nowadays about jaguars,
I have evaluated more than 1100 children and young people
in rural and urban environments,
in the Amazon, in the Pantanal, and in the city of São Paulo.
I've interviewed over 600 rural producers, large and small,
in the Amazon and in the Pantanal.
I've used theories and methods of social psychology and psychometrics,
and that's how I, a biologist, have had a rough ride playing the social scientist,
until I ended up becoming one.
Results show that the jaguar is the species
about which most people have some opinion,
which could be positive or negative,
or even both at the same time.
And most children and young people
say they like it the most or they like it the least.
Regardless of the socio-economic context, from the poor and rural Amazon
to the urban and privileged São Paulo,
the jaguar is definitely the "Top of Mind" and "Top of Heart" species.
Everybody knows it and almost everybody either likes or dislikes it.
But where does all this notoriety come from?
Is it maybe from the direct observation of its beauty?
Unlikely, since the jaguar is one of the most difficult animals to see
in nature.
When you do see, it's just a flash and then it's gone,
only its tracks remain.
So, could it be because of the economic losses that it causes?
The jaguar does kill cattle,
but we have to look at things in perspective.
On average, from 1% to 2% of cattle herd is lost to the jaguar;
diseases and other causes kill more,
but the jaguar is always the one who is blamed.
About jaguars attacking humans,
again we have to look at things in perspective.
No one's afraid of a little mosquito,
but a little mosquito kills millions of people around the world
by transmitting malaria.
But does anyone here know
how many deadly jaguar attacks have been registered in Brazil,
spontaneous ones, not provoked, on human beings?
Just one, and it happened recently.
It was in the Pantanal, a fisherman was sleeping in his tent,
on the banks of the Paraguay River,
the jaguar ripped open the tent and bit his head.
One story!
Now, there are stories about jaguars that people love to tell.
The jaguar is an animal that doesn't appear very easily.
What people feel and think about jaguars
has less to do with their concrete experiences
than with what they hear from others,
from friends, from family, from home, from their social context.
Maybe a sociologist would say that the vision
that people have of the jaguar is socially constructed.
People kill jaguars because of their opinion about them,
but they kill also because of the so-called social rules,
because they believe that killing a jaguar is a socially accepted tradition,
that everybody does it.
The producer thinks like this:
"If my neighbors kill them, then that's the natural thing to do,
then I'm going to kill them, too."
That's how we work.
We tend to go with the flow.
The good news is that this aspect of ourselves can be mobilized
in a communication campaign.
A study has evaluated the effectiveness of different messages
to convince guests in a hotel to save water.
The message with a call for sustainability said:
"Save water for the good of future generations."
The message with a call for social rules said:
"Seventy-five percent of our guests save water."
Guess which one was more effective?
The one which called for social rules.
A lot of people going with the flow.
The problems of conservation are complex
and will demand from us a more integrated vision,
integrated on three levels.
I'm going to use a quotation to explain these levels.
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love,
we will love only what we understand,
and we will understand only what we are taught."
If we understand only what we're taught,
then education and communication are important.
Information alone doesn't always give the right motivation
to adopt a new behavior,
but lack of information is almost always an obstacle
for behavioral change.
To correct prejudice and lack of knowledge about jaguars,
the School of Amazonia, a project of which I'm the coordinator,
has developed and distributes
"People and Jaguars: a Guide for Coexistence."
In communication, it's not only the content that's important,
but also where the information comes from.
When this guidebook reaches the producer through his child
- who received the guide at the local community school -
the impact is greater
than when the book came through an environmental organization,
as it usually does.
That happens because the producer understands that a community institution,
which he knows and respects, has embraced the cause,
and because the information is coming horizontally
through the informal social network to which he belongs,
instead of coming from above.
By integrating actions like this,
we've managed to reduce, among rural producers
from the Amazonian agricultural borders in the north of Mato Grosso,
the perception that everyone kills jaguars.
We love only what we know
and knowledge comes from research.
Conservation of biodiversity is about the interface
between the biological world and the human being.
Research in conservation must be interdisciplinary.
Natural sciences, biology, ecology, are all necessary
but they are not enough.
Social sciences are lacking.
Since we're going to preserve only what we love,
the School of Amazonia has created a charismatic mascot: "Sassá", the jaguar,
who brings children and young people
from the agricultural borders in the Amazon
to get to know the forest and see how beautiful and fun it is.
And if we're only going to preserve what we love
we're going to have to also talk about love.
But scientists have trouble talking about feelings.
Science is based on reason, and emotion is the enemy of reason.
Scientists and environmentalists, when communicating with the public,
talk rationally.
When they talk about garbage, for example, they use numbers.
"Did you know that plastic takes over 450 years to decompose?"
"Wow!"
But is it because of those 450 years
that you don't throw any garbage on the beach, for example?
"And what about 440 years, right?"
You don't do it because garbage on the beach is ugly, you don't like it.
Of course, the jaguar has an ecological and economic value,
but we don't need material reasons
not to want them to disappear.
We don't want them to disappear
because they are also a part of our culture,
because we like jaguars, we find them beautiful,
and because we think that leading a species to extinction
is morally reprehensible, wrong,
from the ethical point of view.
And also because we think that...
knowing that in a forest near your house
there are jaguars, birds, and butterflies, is a sign of quality of life,
even if you never see them.
You don't need scientific reasons
to respect your neighbors, do you?
You respect them for citizenship.
In the same way, we can respect every other species for citizenship,
environmental citizenship.
Of course, things like aesthetics and ethics are subjective,
they vary from person to person.
The ethical consideration that we have towards jaguars, for example,
from the comfort of our urban lives
is different for the rural producer
who's fighting to survive,
and sees his only cow, his source of income,
being eaten by a jaguar.
In the end, all these things also depend on the quality of life of each person.
Talking about quality of life for all species
will be a lot easier
when the quality of life is guaranteed for all.
Thank you.
(Applause)