Source: Greenpeace
New research suggests that more people are worried about the breakdown of nature than we think, yet feel alone in their worries and reluctant to speak out, while also wanting strong leadership that helps the natural world.
Greenpeace says these startling new insights uncover a quiet but strong mandate for more action and more commitment by political leaders to protect nature.
“Politicians in Government and opposition should sit up and take note. Most of the time, this deep current of concern causes only a ripple on the surface, but our research shows that it runs deep and it is a powerful force when stirred,” says Greenpeace campaigner and project lead Jessica Desmond.
“We saw that happen when the John Key Government threatened to mine the most valuable ‘Schedule 4’ conservation land. The response from New Zealanders was visceral and saw one of the biggest protest marches in a generation and the mining proposal scrapped.
Commissioned by Greenpeace, the extensive qualitative research was conducted over the course of a year, involving a broad range of focus group participants from Kerikeri to Invercargill and set out to see how connected people felt with nature.
Researcher Dr Ranmalie Jayasinha says that people spontaneously brought up their concerns for nature, and a clear pattern was identified while collating the data.
“What we were really surprised to see coming up in the focus groups, over and over again, was that people were really concerned about the breakdown and loss of nature, even though we didn’t ask them directly about this,” says Jayasinha.
“Participants also indicated they were hesitant to talk about their concerns for nature with fri
