very Anthropocene conservationists he, in other respects, so opposes. Surprisingly, he even ends up advocating a vision of ‘decoupling economic activity from material and environmental throughputs’ in order to create sustainable livelihoods for a population herded into urban areas to free space for self-willed nature.78 This vision, while grounded in a quite different overarching conceptual perspective, is in many ways quite similar to that which the ecomodernist Breakthrough Institute has recently promoted in its own proposal for land sparing and decoupling to increase terrain for conservation.79
Yet Wilson seems quite iconoclastic in this respect. Many other neoprotectionists are increasingly veering towards a more critical stance on the embrace of capitalism-for-conservation and would want to reign this in, just like they want to reign in population growth, landuse change, and much else that has so far been quite central to the development of global capitalism. This is, clearly, a radical proposal in a context where global capitalism is still hegemonic – something acknowledged by several neoprotectionists. Yet whether it is tenable to be increasingly critical of capitalism while holding one of capitalism’s greatest vices – the human–nature dichotomy – central to one’s plan for the future is something that needs to be critically evaluated.
A FIRST ATTEMPT AT EVALUATING THE ANTHROPOCENE CONSERVATION DEBATE
Given all of this, how should we understand the current status of the great conservation debate, especially the latest, radical responses to the erstwhile dominance of mainstream conservation?80 There are several ways in which we could proceed, but in this chapter’s penultimate section we want to do two things: first, to discuss how different actors in the discussion and the conservation community more broadly have themselves evaluated the debate and how they view the main issues; second, to provide a brief evaluation of the conceptual logic and coherence of the main positions and issues under debate. The point of the latter aim is to provide the basis upon which in the next chapters we will, in more depth, assess whether these positions are tenable or not, theoretically as well as politically, and whether they could lead to just, effective and, equally importantly, realistic conservation proposals for the future.
First, how did different actors in these debates, and within the broader conservation community, understand and evaluate the latest iterations of the great conservation debate? Unsurprisingly, the two main protagonist camps discussed above responded in ways that befit their general outlook on conservation. Neoprotectionists see their position just as they view nature and wilderness itself: as under siege from multiple fronts. Johns relates:
In the mid-1990s conservationists responded to a wave of ideological attacks directed at wilderness and biodiversity. In the last few years concerted attacks have again emerged, and, although they are shopworn, riddled with factual errors, and marbled with hierarchical values, they also appear well-funded, receive lots of media attention, and are advanced with great energy, as if careers depended on them.81
Harvey Locke even implies a stealthy betrayal of trust:
In the last twenty years a more subtle and perhaps equally dangerous group has snuck up on conservationists. They come in stealth, professing to be allies with a fresh approach. They come armed with altruism – concern for the poor and disenfranchised humans around the world. Sharing this moral value, we conservationists listen to them, strive to accommodate their concerns, and then learn to our dismay that they don’t share our basic goal of conserving wild nature.82
Perhaps this helps to explain the impassioned force of neoprotectionists’ critique of the new conservation perspective. Such strong reactions to their work have, in turn, provoked consternation on the part of new conservationists. Why, Marris asks of neoprotectionist critics, ‘do they worry so much about expanding our set of approaches to work for these goals to include more than just protected areas?’83 Similarly, Marvier, on behalf of Kareiva and co-authors, queries not without irony, ‘We do not get it: why are people who love the diversity of plants and animals and habitats so afraid of a diversity of approaches and motivations within the conservation community?’84
But, for neoprotectionists, this is not the point. As Soulé argues, ‘because its goal is to supplant the biological diversity-based model of traditional conservation with something entirely different, namely an economic growth-based or humanitarian movement, it does not deserve to be labelled conservation.’ This is a heavy charge. Soulé makes this point for various reasons, but especially because he feels that new conservationists do not understand the basic science that conservation should be built on: ‘most shocking is the dismissal by the new conservationists of current ecological knowledge. The best current research is solidly supportive of the connection between species diversity and the stability of ecosystems.’85 More generally, much of the new and old back-to-the-barriers literature holds a similarly one-dimensional view of science as uncontested and apolitical; science that espouses a basic truth that only they understand and hence need to defend.86
Again, Marvier is shocked by how her group’s understanding of science can be so interpreted. In an editorial tellingly entitled ‘new conservation is true conservation’, she argues that ‘even more troubling is that Soulé’s stance has no basis in fact. As one of the authors of what Soulé calls “the manifesto of the new conservation movement”, I hope to set the record straight and to help move this debate beyond unproductive infighting.’ She denies that new conservation dismisses the science or the need for protected areas and connectivity in general. Rather, she believes that conservation must expand beyond ‘traditional’ science: ‘We need rigorous testing of new approaches and innovative new science.’87 Pearce is even more forceful on this point. In his book The New Wild he regularly counter-accuses ‘traditional’, neoprotectionist conservationists of adhering to poor, outdated, orthodox science when it comes to the benefits and dangers of alien and invasive species and that, in some cases, conservationists have even resorted to ‘Orwellian science’ and ‘ideology’, rather than ‘good science’.88
Science – like nature – is clearly more dynamic and amenable to multiple interpretations for new conservationists than it is to neoprotectionists. Yet, we believe that it is not just science itself that is at stake in the discussion, even though it is important that the two camps differ on what science is and should be about. What is also fundamentally at stake in this dispute is what science should lead to in practice. For neoprotectionists, this is a radical separation between humans and nonhuman nature in order to protect the latter from increased human influence. For new conservationists, this is a radical acceptance of the mixing of humans and nonhumans into potentially exciting new assemblages. In our terms, all this suggests that what is most fundamentally at stake here is the nature–culture dichotomy itself and how to relate scientific findings and endeavours to this binary – and vice versa. This is such a central issue that we will devote the next chapter to exploring it further.
Other significant issues of contention are the developmental aspirations of new conservation. Soulé again: ‘The key assertion of the new conservation is that affection for nature will grow in step with income growth. The problem is that evidence for this theory is lacking. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction, in part because increasing incomes affect growth in per capita ecological footprint.’89 Marvier disputes this. She argues that ‘we advocate building a solid foundation from the bottom up and providing alternative livelihoods to the poor so that they are not forced to illegally harvest resources or otherwise work against protected areas.’ Central to this conflict is the intrinsic value of nature, long an essential pillar of the neoprotectionists’ perspective. As Marvier contends:
Soulé claims that ‘new conservationists demand that nature not be protected for its own sake but that it be protected only if it materially benefits human beings.’ To the contrary, I encourage the conservation community to continue working in this vein. However, at least in the United States, surveys demonstrate that messages about protecting biodiversity or nature for its intrinsic
