The coastal conservation narrative is shifting from crisis to ecosystem services

Thorsten Balke; Alejandra G Vovides; Cai JT Ladd; Mark Huxham 

Published in ‘Marine Biodiversity’

Abstract

Conservation biology emerged as a crisis discipline in the twentieth century amongst an increasing awareness of pollution and habitat loss. Since the early 2000s, societal and monetary benefits of nature were added to the narrative for biodiversity conservation. Using text mining, we show that authors now favour ecosystem-services over a crisis framing in scientific publications on coastal habitats. This may signal a shift in conservation science from a crisis to a services discipline despite continuing habitat loss. We discuss whether authors should more critically assess what conservation narrative they deploy and what consequences this may have for conservation action