Environmental discourses and biodiversity: the construction of a storyline in understanding and managing an environmental issue

Although biodiversity is considered to be one of today's greatest environmental challenges, its definition remains open to interpretation. How biodiversity is understood and managed depends on the environmental discourses within which it is articulated. This paper examines how the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), one of the largest environmental NGOs in Sweden, describes biodiversity in its 2011 yearbook. The yearbook is aimed at a wide audience and is intended to improve the general public's understanding of biodiversity. Using discourse analysis, this study shows how the SSNC defines biodiversity by re-articulating three environmental discourses and integrating them into a single storyline. The analysis shows how these discourses offer different possibilities for different subject positions to speak about and act in relation to biodiversity. Finally, the study shows how normative implications for action are articulated as consequences of these definitions and who is responsible for performing these actions.