According to the study, biodiversity is hardly an issue in Swiss politics
Published: Tuesday, Sep 3rd 2024, 09:30
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Biodiversity is hardly discussed in many areas of politics. Researchers came to this conclusion after analyzing federal policy documents. Only 1.6 percent of the documents examined made reference to biodiversity.
For the study, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) collected 440,000 documents from the years 1999 to 2018, as Eawag announced on Tuesday. These included session minutes from the National Council and Council of States, postulates and interpellations, legal texts and federal court rulings, reports and expert opinions. The study was carried out as part of a joint research initiative by the two institutes entitled "Blue-Green Biodiversity".
The researchers searched the documents for terms such as biodiversity, moor, wolf, invasive species or fish ladder. They found such terms with a reference to biodiversity in 1.6 percent of the documents. According to the researchers, biodiversity was hardly mentioned in many policy areas relevant to biodiversity, such as spatial planning or transport.
No major changes
Moreover, despite Switzerland's biodiversity strategy, this low status has not changed much since 2012, the researchers wrote in the synthesis report of the "Blue-Green Biodiversity" research initiative. The proportion of biodiversity-related documents has remained low in both decades studied.
In addition, the role of biodiversity decreases over the course of the various phases of the political process. There is generally less mention of biodiversity in the legal texts than in the drafting phase of political business.
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