Framing and visualising biodiversity in EU policy

Abstract This study seeks insights into how biodiversity is framed and visualised in EU policy. The paper presents analysis of both the visual content and written text of two brochures summarising two central EU biodiversity policy documents. The study illustrates how the two modes of communication differ. First, the written text primarily presents an anthropocentric and economic framing of biodiversity values, whereas the visual material generally features the beauty and wonders of nature. Second, the written text strongly emphasises the threats to biodiversity and the detrimental side of human activity, whereas the visual material generally shows close relationships between humans and nature, with humans engaged in small-scale outdoor activities. The analysis illustrates how various representations of biodiversity intersect in the same context, and that the visual representation decontextualises the issue of biodiversity loss from the human exploitation of natural resources and the concrete actions and processes causing it.