in material historical experience and in imaginative prospects.11 It must, in short, be revolutionary.12
As we saw, some neoprotectionists make a similar argument when it comes to why they believe their radical proposals should be taken seriously. New conservationists, likewise, are also fully aware of the radical implications of some of their arguments. This awareness on both sides, however, has not hindered their willingness to step into the debate in order to try and effect change in conservation practice. It might have even spurred them on more. This is, we believe, important testimony to the ‘lived realities’ of the debate, and the people behind it. They realize, as do many others, that we live in a time of radical choices and that choices currently being made have far-reaching ramifications. This is why it is crucial to delve deeper into the key issues at stake in the Anthropocene conservation debate.
RADICAL CHOICES AND RAMIFICATIONS
While still in its early stages, the potentially massive ramifications, as well as the foundational nature of the Anthropocene conservation debate, have already been recognized widely. As we intimated in the introduction, these included a range of actors trying to understand the parameters, origins and effects of the debate. This has led to a range of different responses. Some seem rather taken aback by the heated debate, even calling it ‘vitriolic’. Conservation scientists Heather Tallis and Jane Lubchenco, supported by 238 signatories, spearheaded a comment in Nature calling ‘for an end to the infighting’ that, they claim, ‘is stalling progress in protecting the planet’.13 Others welcome the heated debate. Political ecologists Brett Matulis and Jessica Moyer, commenting on this Nature piece, contend that calls for consensus are futile given that there are in fact fundamental incompatibilities between the positions advanced by the two camps in the debate. They also highlight just how narrow a range of participants in the global conservation movement this debate includes and how many other perspectives on appropriate forms of conservation would be excluded even if the two extremes could be somehow unified. They call instead for an ‘agonistic’ conservation politics in which debate is not suppressed but, on the contrary, opened further to include a wider range of perspectives.14
Other commentators have tried to engage more directly with issues in the debate itself. Geographer Paul Robbins, for example, lauded the new conservationist attempts to stop blaming people, especially those who are marginalized, for bad conservation results, which, in his words:
Portends a real shift not just in doing conservation, but in rethinking the basis for all of what would best be termed the ‘Edenic sciences’, including conservation biology as well as the fields of invasion biology and restoration ecology. Channelling their research into the explanation, analysis, and encouragement of diversity where people live and work, the authors herald a fundamental shift in hypotheses and methods in these sciences, as we move forward into the Anthropocene.15
But at the same time as they applaud new conservation for moving beyond old nature–culture dichotomies, Robbins and others worry about the optimism with which Kareiva et al. and many major conservation organizations put their faith in partnering with capitalist corporations. Robbins warns that ‘corporations can be bad news’ and chides Kareiva and colleagues for being naïve in too easily embracing capitalist models of development and corporate funding. Lisa Hayward and Barbara Martinez, similarly, caution that without appropriate risk management and strategies for measuring success ‘“Conservation in the Anthropocene” will diminish conservation’s reputation and its capacity to spur positive change, and, at worst, may justify the distortions of those who seek to profit at the expense of both people and nature’.16
The latter positions resonate strongly with our own. Hence, we will spend some time discussing this issue in more depth later. First, however, we need to do more justice to the nuances in the debate, while also providing more evidence for what we believe are ultimately the two main, interrelated axes of contention: the nature–culture dichotomy and the relationship between conservation and capitalism. We start with the issue at the heart of it all: the nature of ‘nature’ itself.
THE NATURE OF NATURE
First and foremost among the issues of contention within the great conservation debate has always been the meaning of the term ‘nature’. It would, perhaps, not be an exaggeration to say that this is the key foundational issue around which the whole discussion pivots. One of the central components of common critiques of mainstream conservation is that it has, historically, rested on a conceptual distinction between opposing realms of nature and culture that conservation practice has, in a sense, sought to render material through the creation of protected areas from which human inhabitants were often forcibly removed.17 This dichotomy, and the particular understanding of (nonhuman) nature to which it gives rise, has been problematized as a culturally specific construction largely limited to ‘Western societies’ in the modern era. Such a strict separation between opposing conceptual realms, it is argued, does not reflect the different ways in which other peoples throughout the world understand relationships between humans and other living beings.18 So why, precisely, is this dichotomy such a big issue, and how do different actors in the debate deal with it?
To start with the last part of this question, mainstream conservationists have generally been ambivalent about the concept of nature. On the one hand, many claim that a nature–culture separation is an impediment to conservation: it enforces a sense of distance and alienation from nonhumans, and conservationists therefore often call for greater ‘connection with nature’ through direct experience in outdoor landscapes.19 In their rhetoric and actual practice, on the other hand, conservationists commonly continue to reinforce separations between people and the very nature we are all supposed to be part of. This is most visible in the continued enforcement of conventional protected areas, but also in newer market-based mechanisms such as ecotourism, payments for environmental services, and species banking in which conservation and development are supposed to become one and the same.20
More contradictory still, even as they advocate greater connection with nature, conservationists often simultaneously reinforce a sense of separation from nature. This, then, provides a first glimpse of what is so problematic about the nature–culture dichotomy: humans are supposed to be part of nature, but are at the same time often seen as separate from it. Conservation International’s ‘Nature Is Speaking’ campaign epitomizes this problematic ambivalence (see figure 2). This campaign features a series of short films in which high-profile celebrities like Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts assume the voices of natural forces (such as water and Mother Nature) and decry humans’ rampant assault upon them. One of these short films, narrated by Robert Redford as a redwood tree, insists that the solution to this destruction is for humans to recognize that they are ‘part of nature, rather than just using nature’.21 Yet the campaign’s own motto (‘Nature Doesn’t Need People, People Need Nature’) emphasizes this same separation between people and nature that is seen as the problem, a separation further reinforced by many of these short films in which narrators explicitly speak, as elements of nature, to their distinction from a generic humanity. Julia Roberts, as Mother Earth, for instance, proclaims, ‘I am nature. I am prepared to evolve. Are you?’22
Figure 2. CI signs at the World Parks Congress, Sydney, November 2014.
Photos by Bram Büscher.
Anthropocene conservationists, as we have seen in the previous chapter, embrace the mounting critique of the nature–culture dichotomy. Kareiva and colleagues assert, ‘One need not be a postmodernist to understand that the concept of Nature, as opposed to the physical and chemical workings of natural systems, has always been a human construction, shaped and designed for human ends.’ On this basis they advocate greater integration of human and nonhuman processes
