Reconciling Ecological and Social Justice to Promote Biodiversity Conservation

2005

The Geographical Journal 179(2): 122-131 , 2013

This paper explores the potential for an environmental justice framing to shed new light on conservation controversies. We argue that, in order to make such progress, environmental justice analysis will need to provide a ‘difference-friendly’ conception of justice and that this will necessarily involve moving beyond dominant liberal conceptions of distributional fairness. We are largely welcoming of global deployments of distributive justice principles. However, we also explore the dangers of focusing on distribution alone, questioning the assumption of positive relationships between benefit sharing and more culturally defined dimensions of justice such as recognition. The limits of access and benefit sharing for delivering justice writ large is that it can disenfranchise people who are less well equipped or less willing to navigate its prevailing system of knowledge. We argue that, especially in the context of resource poverty, efforts to improve distribution can require potential beneficiaries to assimilate to dominant discourses of society and nature. Such conditionality can contract the opportunities for local and autonomous constructions of ‘different’ ways of knowing nature, and in doing so may also contract possibilities for flourishing biodiversities.

Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal

The conservation-versus-human rights debate typically positions ecologists and conservationists against social scientists and human rights activists (Rangarajan and Shahabuddin 2010). I argue that recent research in the natural and social sciences invites us to revisit entrenched mythologies, canons, and dogmas on both sides. The moral imperative of biodiversity conservation and protection of endangered species resonates with most people, as does the importance of protecting the rights of vulnerable people. To understand the spaces of agreement and dissent, it is important to disentangle the twin moral imperatives of conservation and social justice from the canons and dogmas informing conservation, actual conservation strategies, and the outcomes for humans and non-human species. The core premise of protected areas-based conservation is that human presence in 'pristine' or 'wilderness' areas is detrimental to biodiversity (Karanth 2018). This canon of human disturbance has underpinned the creation of 'inviolate' protected areas as the preferred strategy for biodiversity conservation worldwide, and also underlies optional strategies like participatory conservation, 'sustainable landscapes' (Karanth 2018), as well as the 'land-sparing' arguments of more recent vintage (Phalan et al. 2011). The rate of creation of protected areas has accelerated in the twentyfirst century as part of a global consensus under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD).

Oryx, 2004

Conservation should benefit ecosystems, nonhuman organisms, and current and future human beings. Nevertheless, tension among these goals engenders potential ethical conflicts: conservationists' true motivations may differ from the justifications they offer for their activities, and conservation projects have the potential to disempower and oppress people. We reviewed the promise and deficiencies of integrating social, economic, and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Despite much progress, neither paradigm provides a silver bullet for conservation's most pressing problems, and both require additional thought and modification to become maximally effective. We conclude that the following strategies are needed to make conservation more effective in our human-dominated world. (1) Conservation research needs to integrate with social scholarship in a more sophisticated manner (2) Conservation must be informed by a detailed understanding of the spatial, temporal, and social distributions of costs and benefits of conservation efforts. Strategies should reflect this understanding, particularly by equitably distributing conservation's costs. (3) We must better acknowledge the social concerns that accompany biodiversity conservation; accordingly, sometimes we must argue for conservation for biodiversity's sake, not for its direct human benefits.

Conservation Biology, 2007

Conservation should benefit ecosystems, nonhuman organisms, and current and future human beings. Nevertheless, tension among these goals engenders potential ethical conflicts: conservationists' true motivations may differ from the justifications they offer for their activities, and conservation projects have the potential to disempower and oppress people. We reviewed the promise and deficiencies of integrating social, economic, and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Despite much progress, neither paradigm provides a silver bullet for conservation's most pressing problems, and both require additional thought and modification to become maximally effective. We conclude that the following strategies are needed to make conservation more effective in our human-dominated world. (1) Conservation research needs to integrate with social scholarship in a more sophisticated manner. (2) Conservation must be informed by a detailed understanding of the spatial, temporal, and social distributions of costs and benefits of conservation efforts. Strategies should reflect this understanding, particularly by equitably distributing conservation's costs. (3) We must better acknowledge the social concerns that accompany biodiversity conservation; accordingly, sometimes we must argue for conservation for biodiversity's sake, not for its direct human benefits.

Environmental History, 2020

Preserving the World's biodiversity is part of that ecological disquietedness, and worries to preserve the world's biodiversity are one the most stringent narratives of the modern global society. However, the general narrative to preserve biodiversity is often hotly debated; it opposes preservationists against conservationists in a publicly obscured debate caused by its technicality, metaphors, and the scientific biodiversity conservation jargon. Ethical questions are spoken about in many instances but remaining so often left behind during planning exercises aimed at implementing biodiversity conservation activities. The chapter notes that debates on the ethics of biodiversity conservation often lead to strangled considerations with fierce opposition between conservationists and other stakeholder groups such as extractive industries, wildlife poachers, and biodiversity-dependent communities. The chapter argues that the landscape approach, through its stakeholder's inclusive planning process brings not only a new perspective on ethical questions posed by conservation activities but also clarified, owned (shared), and responsibly agreed upon ways to account for human ethical considerations into the global ethics of biodiversity conservation, which will ultimately reduce tensions. Keywords Biodiversity conservation ethics • Rights of local communities • Fears over conservation maps • Wildlife-human conflicts • And participative process

2018

Sustainable forms of co-inhabitation in this world are not only possibilities; they are actualities. However, for their expression, it is essential to undertake a twofold task: (1) to precisely and severely sanction those agents who act guided by a self-absorbed economic interest threating the sustainability of life, and (2) to decisively defend those traditions of thought and communities who favor the continuity of life in its diversity of biological and cultural expressions. For the second task to be undertaken effectively, it is critical to understand that the conservation of, and the access to, the diverse native habitats is the condition of possibility for the continuity of the diverse and sustainable life habits of communities of co-inhabitants that inhabit them. The conservation of habitats and life habits is so critical that it constitutes an ethical imperative that should be incorporated into government policies as a matter of socio-environmental justice. To implement this ...

2015

Although anthropologists are rising to the call for increased attention to the environment, there is a fundamental conflict of interest for anthropologists concerned with the environment. This book argues that if social scientists and environmental anthropologists want to remain relevant in the Anthropocene, this era of environmental damage and repair, then we need to scourge the exceptionalism that we attribute to human beings and accept them as part of the natural system. This volume provides detailed explanations for how anthropologists can prioritize the environment by better integrating it into their ethnographic research and continuing to help and represent the human communities that depend on the well being of natural world. It reintroduces the environment into environmental anthropology and demonstrates how the field’s theories and methodological tools can aid efforts to understand various cultural perspectives and mediate environmental problems. It addresses the types of interdisciplinary, environmentally focused projects that are bringing anthropology to the forefront of community conservation projects and policy initiatives. It takes into account a range of environmental and social issues around the world and presents various examples of environmental degradation, ethics, and knowledge, as well as, instances of environmental conservation efforts and learning. It provides valuable methods of accessing such knowledge and insightful theoretical frameworks for assessing and synthesizing such information. This book gives students and researchers in anthropology, conservation, environmental ethics and across the social sciences an invaluable inisght into how innovative and intensive new methodologies, questions, and broader subject pools can close the gap between anthropology as an anthropocentric social science and an informative environmental anthropology that can serve as a policy-tool and applied science.

The United Nations declared the 2010s to be the Decade on Biodiversity, but to what avail? A generation after the Convention of Biological Diversity launched the term biodiversity into the realm of global environmental policy, species' numbers keep declining, as do state-funded conservation measures. Meanwhile, public attention to ecological crises focuses understandably on immediate dangers of undrinkable water and unbreathable air. With climate change deniers in positions of power, simply decrying the daunting climactic changes underway takes work, alliances, and political strategy. In this dire ecological and political time, supporters of both biodiversity and its conservation are hard-pressed to state their case.