Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Panda "Adoption" - Conserving the cute and cuddly or funding the…
Panda "Adoption" - Conserving the cute and cuddly or funding the Chinese agenda?
Animal "Adoption" - what does it mean when you adopt an animal?
WWF: helps boost projects, work with local communities, protect habitats, boost other projects around the world
"Our planet’s wildlife is rapidly disappearing and money from adoptions helps us protect some of our most important species from direct threats such as hunting or poaching, as well as indirect ones like habitat loss and climate change. Money from our adoptions goes both directly to support the species adopted, as well as to fund our wider work to protect nature and our planet. In our last financial year, for every £1 WWF raised, 70p was spent on on-the-ground conservation programmes and related work to tackle the biggest environmental threats to our world."
In essence - provides funding to help in ways which they decide
Do people really know what they are paying for? Monthly updates aren't very detailed, just trust that the money is helping.
Often advertised as gifts for animal lovers
Not actually adopting - no name, not yours
Possible questions: why do people adopt? What are their views? Do they actually think it is effective?
Panda loaning from China and building global relations
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1017/S1466046613000185
|
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8183334/
Three phases overtime
60s + 70s: Gifting pandas to build strategic relationships
Late 70s to present: Pandas are loaned based on financial transactions (emerging capitalist model)
Now onwards: panda loaned to nations supplying China with valuable resources and technology and symbolize China's willingness to build deep trade relationships characterized by trust, reciprocity, loyalty, and longevity (guanxi)
Especially important since the 2008 Sichuan
earthquake (destroying panda habitats and disrupting the very short breeding season) and rise of China as a global economic power
e.g. Scotland provided salmon meat, Land Rover cars, and
petrochemical and renewable energy technology for their pandas at Edinburgh zoo
Panda diplomacy is using soft power (culture, political values and foreign policies) to remedy its sense of global threat
Conservation is directly tied with politics
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01292986.2020.1725075?src=recsys
Digital diplomacy
"... practice of panda engagement online is highly politicized in the context of China’s public diplomacy. Chinese media outlets use Twitter (a) to spread official discourse and views in the diplomatic arena to strengthen the government’s impact and (b) to accrue sympathy capital and increase attractiveness through strategic placement of imagery (e.g. static images, moving gifs, and video clips) and textual narrative."
"panda-themed tweets promoted and strengthened Sino-foreign relations using digital public diplomacy but also show that Chinese media followed the principles of constructive journalism to transfer positive emotions to target publics."
Also known as a symbol for conservation, e.g. WWF logo
Popular appeal - on lots of merchandise
Panda habitat prioritisation over other animals
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/04/asia/china-panda-conservation-study-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html
Symbol of China, flagship species
Populations growing through habitat restoration
Hard to conserve - inflexible diet, poor reproductive traits
Umbrella species - protecting them helps protect other species and thus the larger ecosystem...
Benefits small carnivores - but not larger ones including leopards, snow leopards, dholes and wolves
Have disappeared from their original reserve locations
Possible method: GIS showing change in habitats?
Single-species policy conservation does not benefit biodiversity
Giant Panda National Park unification
https://sci-hub.se/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989419307887
Protected areas across Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu will cover 27,000km2, looking after 86% if the panda population
Formed under the Chinese Government...