The climate action pressure group ‘Extinction Rebellion’ did not mince it words when publicly challenging the CEO of Media 24 to ramp up the group’s reporting on climate change and ‘tell the truth’ about this unfolding global catastrophe. Gathering with banners and placards outside Media 24’s Foreshore building on 22 April, they criticised the language used by the press, radio and TV in its climate-reporting as being ‘too abstract’. Terms such as ‘biodiversity’ should be simplified to ‘natural life’ when referring to plants and animals, and ‘biodiversity loss’ had to be replaced with ‘destruction of nature’. Clear, to the point and punchy. Do you agree, and does this criticism extend to our use of the terms ‘biodiversity’ and ‘ecosystems’ in the context of development planning and environmental assessment? Is there anything that should be done to use language so that it enlightens instead of obfuscating crucial concepts and their implications for ‘sustainable development’? This session will be more about kindling thoughts than, as Socrates is believed to have said, filling passive vessels with knowledge (bound to be forgotten somewhere between the venue and the turn of a starter motor)

CHARL DE VILLIERS, a former journalist, sometimes-university-lecture and environmental consultant who spent four years in the ‘biodiversity sector’ at Kirstenbosch, will lead an illustrated discussion on what we understand by ‘biodiversity, its relevance to our professional lives and what could help to bring jargon such as ‘biodiversity mainstreaming’ to life for architects, planners, engineers and surveyors. He is a Registered Environmental Assessment Practitioner with more than 20 years’ experience, gained almost exclusively in agricultural settings in the Western Cape ‘platteland’. He led the Botanical Society of SA’s ‘Biodiversity in EIA’ project from 2004 to 2009, contributed to the 2005 and 2016 editions of the ‘Fynbos Forum Ecosystem Guidelines for Environmental Assessment in the Western Cape’, acted as biodiversity mainstreaming adviser to the agricultural component of SANBI’s national grasslands programme and led the team that drafted the Sandveld Environmental Management Framework on behalf of the Western Cape government. Charl wrote a chapter on land-use planning and impact assessment for the book ‘Fynbos: Ecology and Management’ (Esler et al., 2014), served as the IAIAsa’s Western Cape branch chairperson in 2006/2007 and participated in the Sandveld Forum, the Land-use Task Team of the C.A.P.E. programme and Agri Western Cape’s Natural Resources Policy Committee. He studied philosophy, political philosophy and journalism at Stellenbosch and was awarded an MPhil in environmental management by the University of Cape Town. He is married with two daughters and lives in Vredehoek, Cape Town.