Actors’ identities influence their picture of other conflict parties in biodiversity conflicts. Here, a farmer and a conservationist cooperate with each other. Picture from Freepik.

By Thomas Fickel, Adrian Rothers, and Juliette C. Young.

Read the full paper here.

Biodiversity has many values. Integrating these values into policy is a societal goal. Our research investigates how this integration can be done more effectively and comprehensively. One big problem is that different societal actors have different perceptions of which biodiversity values are most important and, thus, which way of relating to biodiversity is the most important and “right” one. In general, biodiversity research tries to address this problem by proposing communication processes in which all relevant stakeholders come together and discuss their perceptions, learn about their differing perspectives, and, on this basis, find solutions that can integrate their perspectives and be more sustainable. However, many complications can undermine these processes, and we examined one of them in our article: negative attributions.

Groups often need to define a “negative” other group in order to define themselves. This is based on the idea that identities have two sides. One is a positive imagination of the self, like seeing oneself as “a good entrepreneurial farmer.” The other side of identity is a negative imagination, which contrasts the positive feeling of oneself as a good farmer with negative feeling about the other, for example, the lazy, donation-seeking conservationists. Thus, the negative imagination is necessary for the positive imagination. We chose this phenomenon as we observed its emergence in conflicts between agriculture and conservation. Here negative imaginations are often mentioned and disrupt mutual learning but are barely considered and discussed in the field of value integration research.          

In our paper, we conduct a detailed analysis of how these negative attributions are described by conflict actors. We do this by interviewing 16 experts who are actively engaged in the conflict on insect protection in agrarian landscapes. Our findings reveal that these interviewees often mention negative attributions towards the other side, which are intricately linked to a positive imagination of their own identity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these attributions share a similar structure when compared between the groups.    

In the discussion, we reflect on the novel insights of our research. First, we propose a way to structure the negative attributions we found and then link them to existing concepts from social psychology and biodiversity value research. Moreover, we highlight the disruptive nature of negative attributions in the context of deliberative mutual learning processes. These attributions, often affective in nature and deeply rooted in identity formation, can hinder the perception of the other side as a viable partner in the learning process, thereby impeding the progress towards sustainable solutions. We discuss some ideas on how deliberative processes can deal with them. These are discussing and reflecting on negative attributions or using them as indicators for robust outcomes.