IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

arborvitae Issue 42 - Communicating Forest Values

21 January 2011 | Downloads - publication

• What is a forest? ...at best something nice to look at, somewhere to walk their dog, a refuge from the hurly-burly of daily life.
• How sexy are forests? as a forest expert...you have to realise that most people take decisions not based on the head, but on the heart, guts and sex.
• Perspective: ...kill the extinction message. The 'Love' message trumps the 'Loss' message for grabbing the public's attention.

"To mark the International Year of Forests, and in editorial partnership with IUCN’s Commission on Education and Communication (CEC), this special full-colour issue of arborvitae takes a critical yet constructive look at how forest values are being communicated to non-foresters. One theme that runs through several articles is the need to recognize and respond to people’s emotional connections to forests; another is the powerful impact of photographs to inspire readers to act on written messages. With these points in mind, we invite you to try an exercise in ‘relating to your audience’ and look at the colour photos on the centre pages of this issue using your heart rather than your head, to see what they say to you."

Stewart Maginnis, Head of IUCN's Forest Conversation Programme

and

Keith Wheeler, Chair of IUCN's Commission on Education and Communication

Contents

2 Editorial

3 International initiative: International Year of Forests

4-7 Forests: an image problem? What is a forest? How to get a child to love a forest? How sexy

are forests?

8-9 Images for forest conservation

10 Perspective: Love not loss

11 Learning: Web-based learning for forestry professionals

12-15 Communications cases: Communicating biodiversity to private forest owners in Estonia, Calling attention to Africa’s bright side, When a spotlight is needed, A communications success story from the International Year of Biodiversity

16 The interview: Janaka de Silva