The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature beyond the Anthropocene

A revolution is brewing in conservation. Not necessarily an event that makes everything different, but an underground pressure building towards radical change. The trigger is the arrival of the Anthropocene - our alleged new... [ view full abstract ]

A revolution is brewing in conservation. Not necessarily an event that makes everything different, but an underground pressure building towards radical change. The trigger is the arrival of the Anthropocene - our alleged new phase of world history in which humans dominate the earth-system and the concept of nature has become obsolete. This arrival seems to have upped the ante dramatically; the choices facing the conservation community have now become particularly stark. It is therefore no surprise that we have recently seen several radical proposals for revolutionising conservation and heated debates around them. One proposal, the ‘new’ conservation, asserts that humans must take their ‘earth domination’ seriously and manage this to maximize sustainability and economic development. The response has been a radical resurgence of ‘neoprotectionism’. This view aims to separate development from conservation and calls (again) for a drastic expansion of protected areas, even up to half the planet.

This book is the first to provide a sustained reflection on these radical conservation proposals and their implications for thinking about development. We argue that both proposals hold important seeds for radical change but that each on its own contains untenable, even dangerous contradictions. The reason: they do not take the analysis of capitalism seriously enough. In-depth analysis of the contradictions reveals that to do justice to the debate’s radical implications we need to take it out of the Anthropocene and place it more appropriately within the Capitalocene. Humans, after all, cannot overcome the age of humans; we can –indeed we must - overcome the age of capital.

Inspired by political ecology and real-world examples of saving nature differently, we build on the analysis to develop an alternative position we call ‘convivial conservation’. Convivial conservation allows radical seeds to grow into a realistic and positive way forward for reconciling global conservation and development imperatives; it allows for a post-capitalist approach to conservation that dissipates the increasing pressures of the Capitalocene. And perhaps, it might spark a conservation revolution; one where conservation is fully integrated into an overarching movement to create a more equal and sustainable world.