Biodiversity in Literature – a thermometer for ecological literacy and nature connection

With land-use change resulting in people being removed from nature in their everyday lives, there is a need to identify and quantify the potential subsequent loss of connection to nature. Nature experience and connection is well-documented to underpin general conservation interest. It is therefore vital to understand its temporal trends, to ensure future prioritization of biodiversity and ecosystem services among the public, and in policy and societal decisions. In the BODIL project, we investigate the role of nature in Swedish newspapers and novels across the past hundred years. Popular texts can be used as a thermometer of public knowledge of and attitude towards nature, something which is particularly challenging to measure over large time spans. We use an interdisciplinary approach and combine a broad quantitative analysis on the prevalence of nature in newspaper texts using AI, and qualitative approaches aiming to identify themes and the context in which nature is mentioned. The BODIL project will provide both an overarching analysis of general trends and detailed results, which can tease apart contextual patterns and potential drivers of change. By putting the results into an ecological context, we aim to answer the question if connection between people and nature indeed is eroding.

This project is funded by the Strategic Research Area BECC.