Hurray! Sustainable communication wizard Jakob Trollbäck and his colleagues at The New Division, the very same team that devised the legendary wheel of the UN Sustainable Development Goals back in 2015, have done it again. Their gift to us all comes just in time for the holidays: a brand-new shiny bauble to hang in the Christmas tree. Unveiled precisely one year after the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted, the new logo is the centrepiece of an awareness-raising campaign dubbed ‘The Biodiversity Plan: For Life on Earth’.
As the rebranding campaign evolves, I shall be watching closely how the clever communication guys endeavour to distil the complex messages of all 23 targets for 2030 and the four goals for 2050 formulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity. For now, the swanky new visual identity will have to do.
Isn’t it a brilliant start, though? The emblematic biodiversity circle is not just aesthetically appealing but also pregnant with symbolism. And you don’t even have to be a mathematician to appreciate the elegance of the Voronoi tessellation1 that forms the basis of the logo. Even the less scientifically schooled among us should feel the pull of its wonderfully random ‘natural look’. After all, it is everywhere around us – from bee hives to the coat of a giraffe. Yet the designers must have also had a more discerning audience in mind. Biologists would probably recognise the geometrical tool, widely used to understand the physical constraints that drive the organisation of tissues. Ecologists have been employing the same algorithm to study the growth patterns of forests and develop predictive models for forest fires, among numerous other applications.
“Voronoi diagrams are captivating geometrical patterns that weave themselves into the very fabric of nature’s tapestry,” states the Brand Guide just published on the official website of the Convention on Biological Diversity. “They emerge as silent poets, etching tales of connection across cell membranes. In these patterns, we glimpse the heartbeats of the mathematical elegance that is intertwined with the soul of the natural world, evoking a sense of wonder and beauty.”
In case the allegory of the image still eludes you, despite the eloquent motivation of its creators, the logo consists of 23 colourful elements, each representing one of the biodiversity targets and forming a unified whole. It is meant to capture “our connection to all life on the planet and the intricate beauty that surrounds us.”
I find it only fitting to adorn the end of 2023 with this bright and shiny biodiversity symbol. In an otherwise rather bleak year for sustainability, there has been undeniably some progress on recognising the importance of the natural world and nature-based solutions, at least. It is not obvious whether the complicated tango choreography of the recently concluded COP28 took us forward in many areas. Still, even the staunchest among conservation groups are hailing the natural capital side of the negotiations. Simply including biodiversity and a 2030 global deforestation goal in the UAE consensus that emerged in Dubai is laudable; acknowledging the interconnectedness between nature and climate, rather than treating the two as separate subjects, is even more promising.
Visual symbols are formidable conveyors of meaning. They fuel our imagination and evoke profound emotions and memories. They can also be powerful motivators. Here’s to the new biodiversity bauble; may it work its magic!
Merry Christmas!
1. Named after the Russian mathematician Georgy Voronoi, this type of diagram was considered as early as 1644 by Descartes. It is created by scattering points at random on an Euclidean plane. The plane is then divided up into cells, one around each point, consisting of the region of the plane nearer to that point than any other.↩
