Why is there a Climate Camp for protesters who object to high-carbon industries but no "biodiversity bivouac" for people who want action on species loss? One reason, a new survey suggests, is that the public knows very little about efforts to protect biodiversity.

Just 12% of people are even aware of a major UN meeting on biodiversity next month, according to the poll for the Natural History Museum (NHM). A mere 3% of the more than 1,000 people interviewed said they actually knew what the conference was about. It seems safe to say public awareness of the Convention on Biological Awareness in Nagoya - and its goal of safeguarding wildlife - is close to non-existent.

Compare that to climate change and the hype leading up to the UN's climate summit in Copenhagen last December. During 2009, you couldn't move for climate change-related activism and direct action, from street protests at the G20 in London to over 900 climate marchers being arrested in Copenhagen. The UNFCCC's COP15 climate conference was also regular front-page news, sometimes taking over the entire front-pages of a coordinated set of the world's newspapers.

Language could be one problem. While most people understand the concept of a warming world, biodiversity seems a more arcane, academic word. Indeed, very few people appear to understand it - just 13% in NHM's survey said they knew "exactly what it means and I could explain it to a friend." (For the other 87%, our Q&A primer is a good start.)

Dr Robert Bloomfield, co-ordinator for the UK response to the International Year of Biodiversity, thinks there are several reasons for the chasm of awareness and activism. "The first is that climate change is a relatively easy message and the overall response is consistent - reduce carbon emissions. But the biodiversity message, by definition, is about particular ecosystems and require different responses - there's not a simple narrative," he said.

"Then there's a lack of a biodiversity equivalent to the IPCC [the UN's climate science panel], which provides a platform for the science and for controversies to be played out in the media. There's been no such body for biodiversity and there are several conventions - not just the CBD, but others such as Ramsar [to protect wetlands] and Cites [to stop trade in endangered species]. Hopefully the nearly agreed decision to create IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - an IPCC equivalent] will make biodiversity science much more media-savvy."

Media coverage certainly plays a part. Compare the 428 biodiversity-tagged articles on the Guardian to the 9,647 on climate change, or Google Trends' analysis that traffic on climate change is double that on biodiversity.

A third reason, Bloomfield thinks, is politics. "It's fair to say climate got a head of steam up in the mainstream of politics, rather than just being hived off with environmental departments. The Stern report helped make the green economy story. When it comes to political organisations and their finance departments, economic costs are all they listen to." He hopes the 'Teeb' report (Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), already part published and due to be completed next month, will do the same for biodiversity.

There's also business. The opportunity to make some cash is much more obvious with climate change - from emissions trading to the clean technology world of wind turbines, solar power, energy efficient tech and green cars - than with biodiversity. Just today EU climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, said Europe needs to set carbon targets for 2030 and 2050 to make it competitive with the rest of the world on cleantech.

So why so many climate activists? Bloomfield says the answer is probably in NGOs' focus on human rights and development. "I think within the campaigning community, the immediate analogy that climate problems have a impact on sustainable development - the human consequence - is very clear. But it's been much less apparent that biodiversity loss has a direct human consequence. If you look at the history of biodiversity campaigning, it's been about conservation projects and people not wanting to lose the environment for aesthetic reasons, such as protecting tigers and pandas."

Whatever the reason for the dearth of campaigns against species loss, the UK public at least has an appetite to do something about it. 65% of people surveyed by NHM are fairly or very interested in it as an issue, and the overwhelming response to our 'biodiversity 100' project with George Monbiot shows people do care.