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Introduction

A revolution in conservation is brewing. This is not necessarily an event that makes everything different. Rather, a growing urgency and pressure are building towards radical change. Even a cursory glance at conservation debates over the last decade shows that pressures on species and ecosystems – and hence the conservation community concerned with saving them – are extremely high and are certain to further increase. It has led to a growing realization that incremental, reformist change will not suffice to alleviate the pressure. The question for conservation is no longer whether we want or need radical change. It is brewing regardless. It is already happening. The question is how we understand the pressures and help direct imminent radical change towards something positive. This is the crossroads facing the conservation community today.

Now, the statement that conservation is at a crossroads has been true for a long time. Conservation biology, for example, has consistently portrayed itself as a ‘crisis discipline’. Making ‘hard choices’ in complex contexts has always been part of the conservation equation. Yet the recent discussions concerning the advent of the Anthropocene seems to have upped the ante considerably, rendering already hard choices even more difficult. In this brave new world, ongoing debate concerning appropriate conservation strategies has moved beyond the longstanding ‘people versus parks’ dispute that had previously divided conservationists for decades. In the last decade, a number of radical alternate approaches to contemporary mainstream conservation have emerged. The two most prominent of these are ‘new’ or ‘Anthropocene’ conservation, on the one hand, and the ‘neoprotectionist’ or ‘new back-to-the-barriers’ movement, on the other. Together, these have caused quite a rift among conservationists.

According to new conservationists, life in the Anthropocene places an unprecedented and special burden on humans. Homo sapiens are seen to have changed global ecosystem functioning to such a degree that they now have to cultivate and manage the earth as one immense ‘rambunctious garden’.¹ This is not necessarily something negative. Instead of only mourning biodiversity loss due to anthropocenic ecosystemic change, new conservationists believe we should switch focus to understanding and supporting the new and even potentially exciting possibilities that current global changes may bring.² Hence, what makes new conservation radical is that it aims to do away with conservation’s long-standing infatuation with wilderness and associated ideas about ‘pristine’ nature as well as the conviction that these can be conserved as untouched protected spaces, away from humans. Nature and ecosystems always change, new conservationists argue. So why not embrace the ‘new natures’ that are currently evolving and use them to support human development?

To say that this perspective became a lightning rod is an understatement. After its opening salvos in 2011 and 2012, the new conservation proposal immediately provoked strong responses. Amongst these was a resurgence of ‘neoprotectionism’: a longstanding movement calling for a return to protected area expansion and enforcement. Unlike new conservationists, neoprotectionists do not believe that human-induced change is something (potentially) positive. Quite the contrary: they fear it will be the earth’s undoing, precipitating the downfall of Homo sapiens and innumerable other species in the process.³ In the face of new conservation’s bold acceptance of global human-centred conservation management, therefore, neoprotectionists have also upped their game considerably. Instead of putting humans in charge, they want to put nature back in charge. Many even argue that at least half the entire planet must be set-aside in a system of protected areas reserved for ‘self-willed’ nature. Only in this way, they assert, can an impending global ecological catastrophe be averted.⁴ Instead of the radical mixing of people and nonhuman nature that new conservationists endorse, resurgent neoprotectionists call for a separation between people and nature on a scale hitherto never imagined.

These two radical proposals present far-reaching challenges to what we will refer to in this book as contemporary ‘mainstream conservation’.⁵ Mainstream conservation, many will agree, is not easy to define. In reality, it constitutes a very broad amalgam of different approaches, ideas and dynamics. Yet two key characteristics, we believe, based on our research over the last twenty years, can be singled out and generalized across this constellation for heuristic purposes. Mainstream approaches, first, still revolve very much around protected areas with strong links to broader participatory, stakeholder-focused approaches, including community-based conservation models. A second main characteristic of mainstream conservation is its capitalist character. This has been true for a long time but is increasingly focused on the idea that conserved nature can be turned into in situ ‘natural capital’ so that the creativity of the pursuit of profit can effectively and efficiently be linked to the protection of nature and the ‘environmental services’ it provides. The following chapter will expand on what we mean by mainstream conservation and relate this to the radical challenges brought by the emergence of the Anthropocene.

THE CHALLENGES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

Popularized by geologist Paul Crutzen at the turn of the twenty-first century, the Anthropocene thesis is essentially the assertion that human influence has come to dominate all nonhuman processes to the point that it can now be identified as a distinct layer in the geological record.⁶ The Anthropocene should thus designate our movement from the Holocene into a new epoch characterized by this pervasive human signature. The notion resonates with a similar contention by journalist Bill McKibben that expansion of human influence – particularly in terms of anthropogenic climate change – has precipitated the ‘end of nature’ as a distinct self-willed force altogether. Contemporary discussion of the Anthropocene contains quite similar proclamations that ‘Nature is Over’ or that ‘Nature no longer runs the earth. We do’.⁷

The Anthropocene thesis, clearly, is a grand one. It is not surprising, therefore, that the concept and its implications have been and continue to be hotly debated, including among social scientists. Some, including many neoprotectionists, suggest that it exaggerates the extent of human control over the planet, proposing that nonhumans (from microbes to cereal grains) can instead be understood as colonizing and directing human processes.⁸ Others worry that the concept conceals the reality that different groups of people have vastly different environmental impacts behind the image of a generalized ‘humanity’.⁹ Yet others, including some critical social scientists, have embraced the idea. They assert that this new reality completes the demise of the idea of an autonomous nature already initiated by critical perspectives in diverse scientific and philosophical traditions. Human geographer Jamie Lorimer thus states that ‘diagnosis of the Anthropocene challenges the modern figure of Nature that has become so central to Western environmental thought, politics, and action.’ Rather, ‘the Anthropocene describes a very different world. This world is hybrid – neither social nor natural. It is nonlinear rather than in balance. Futures will not be like the past and will be shaped by human actions. Multiple natures are possible’.¹⁰

Social scientists who accept the Anthropocene see positive potential in how this new reality forces humans to acknowledge the extent to which their actions influence the planet and to therefore take their obligation to responsibly steward it more seriously. Lorimer asserts:

The diagnosis of the Anthropocene and the popularization of the ‘end of Nature’ has the potential to value and catalyze modes of ‘stewardship’ based on diverse, reflexive awareness of the always-entangled nature of humans with their environments, the indeterminacy of ecology, and thus, the contested nature of any aspirations toward environmental management – from the local to the planetary scale.¹¹

In this way, people may become ‘aware of the impossibility of extricating themselves from the earth and start … to take responsibility for the world in which they live …’¹²

Taking heed of these different positions, the question of whether we should label our current era the Anthropocene is important. Later in the book, we will argue that a better descriptor for this new phase of human history is the ‘Capitalocene’, as argued by Andreas Malm, Jason Moore and others.¹³ For now, however, we will continue to use the term since it has played such a pivotal role in the current conservation debate. Moreover, despite continuing debate concerning its validity as a scientific descriptor of the geological record, the last several years have seen the Anthropocene concept become increasingly used and accepted in both academic and popular media. The term, in short, has hit a raw nerve, prompting exploration of its grand implications.

Several of these implications present intriguing challenges for conservation, particularly for how to (re)interpret conservation science and what this says about our contemporary socio-ecological predicament. The dominant tenor from the scientific front is that the state of global biodiversity is dire, keeps getting worse and may soon surpass ‘planetary boundaries’ beyond which even more dramatic decline is inevitable. Some even argue that we are on the brink of ‘biological annihilation’.¹⁴ Yet, if the Anthropocene forces us to rethink basic assumptions of both the natural and social sciences – and hence the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ more generally – it may also demand that we rethink this dominant position. This is something that the new conservation trend has taken to heart.¹⁵

The Anthropocene challenge is not just about how to act on what ‘science’ teaches us concerning the state of the global environment. Another equally fundamental challenge is that it has given massive impetus to long-standing discussions on how to (re)interpret the (role of) science in the first place.¹⁶ These major challenges for conservation are at the centre of the current conservation debate, one that increasingly seems to demand radical choices.

RADICAL CHOICES

Clearly, whatever the Anthropocene means, there is widespread consensus that our current reality of global, human-induced ecosystemic change presents stark challenges for conservation. It is concern for this dynamic that has led to the radical proposals now on the table. In this book, we critically examine these radical proposals within the context of the broader history of the conservation debate and propose our own alternative of ‘convivial conservation’. For heuristic purposes, we deliberately start our presentation of these different approaches in a highly simplified manner, organizing the debate along two main axes: from capitalist to postcapitalist positions on one axis; and from positions steeped in nature–people dichotomies to those that aim to go beyond these dichotomies, on the other. As the book proceeds, we will problematize this simplistic picture to do more justice to the complexities of the current conservation debate and its participants, as well as to present a realistic and positive alternative.¹⁷ If, for the moment, we stick to simplifying heuristics, however, we can identify four main positions along these two axes: mainstream conservation, new conservation, neoprotectionism and, finally, what we call ‘convivial conservation’. The resulting schematic is depicted in Table 1.

Table 1. Four main positions on saving nature in the Anthropocene

	Nature/culture dichotomies	Beyond N/C dichotomies
Capitalist	Mainstream conservation	New conservation
Beyond-capitalist	Neoprotectionism	Convivial conservation

Mainstream conservation, we argue, is fundamentally capitalist and steeped in nature–people dichotomies, especially through its foundational emphasis on protected areas and continued infatuation with (images of) wilderness and ‘pristine’ natures. Phrased differently, mainstream conservation does not fundamentally challenge the hegemonic, global capitalist order and is firmly embedded in myriad ‘dualisms’ wherein humans, and their society or culture, are seen as (epistemologically and ontologically) distinct from ‘nature’. As mentioned above, it is this latter element that new conservation targets and what makes it radical for many mainstream and other conservationists.¹⁸ New conservationists portray nature and wilderness as an integrated element in a broader socio-natural ‘rambunctious garden’ to be managed by people. In effect, this seems to be the conservation biology version – and partial acceptance – of the idea advanced by critical social scientists that ‘nature’ is in reality always (plural) ‘socionatures’.¹⁹ This management, in turn, can (and for many should) be ardently capitalist. Many key new conservationists are, for example, staunch supporters of environmental service valuation and natural capital solutions to the environmental crisis.²⁰ These solutions not only leave growth and consumerism unproblematized but embrace these, albeit cloaked in a ‘green’ or ‘ecologically modern’ guise.

Neoprotectionists reject both these elements. As opposed to new conservationists, they are deeply and often consciously entrenched in nature–people dichotomies and believe that separation between people and nature is needed to stave off a collapse of all life-supporting ecosystems. At the same time, they have become increasingly – and often openly – critical of the continued faith in growth and consumerism shown by the new conservationists and those in the mainstream.²¹ In certain ways, with some important exceptions, many neoprotectionists are thus rather critical of contemporary capitalism, either explicitly or implicitly. However, one major problem in this stance, we will argue, is that this critique is often not based on a coherent theoretical or political frame, which leads to several intriguing and even disturbing contradictions in this position (as we discuss in the next chapters).

The two radical conservation approaches show that a conservation revolution might be brewing. Yet they cannot by themselves cause a revolution: neither is nearly radical enough and their contradictions, we will argue, cannot provide a realistic way forward. We see them, rather, as a prelude to the fundamental transformation that is needed. This is where convivial conservation comes in. The crucial difference between mainstream conservation, the two radical alternatives now on the table, and our own convivial conservation proposal is that we explicitly start from a political ecology perspective steeped in a critique of capitalist political economy. This critique is built on a rejection of both nature–people dichotomies and a capitalist economic system demanding continual growth via intensified consumerism. This probably makes it the most radical of the four proposals. But, we will argue in the conclusion, also the most coherent and realistic one. To put it bluntly: without directly addressing capitalism and its many engrained dichotomies and contradictions, we cannot tackle the conservation challenges before us. To take political ecology and a critique of capitalism seriously, therefore, means that we cannot rely on the current positions in the conservation debate, including their conceptualizations of nature and its relations to humans. This is why we will spend considerable time, in chapter five, developing our alternative proposal.

Convivial conservation might sound slightly awkward when suggesting a postcapitalist approach to conservation. Yet we have chosen the term deliberately. Most directly, because it is obvious that we need to find a better way to ‘con vivire’, ‘live with’ (the rest of) nature. At the same time, the term was inspired by Ivan Illich’s 1973 book Tools for Conviviality. In it, he acknowledges that he is ‘aware that in English “convivial” now seeks the company of tipsy jollyness’ but adds that this is ‘opposite to the austere meaning of modern “eutrapelia,” which I intend’.²² Eutrapelia is generally defined as ‘the quality of being skilled in conversation’. We believe that this is precisely what is needed in order to move the Anthropocene conservation debate forward: to skilfully and sensitively engage with the radical ideas now on the table and to imagine and enable a transition to a postcapitalist conservation. This, then, is how we understand and use ‘conviviality’, at least for now. In chapter five, we will develop further both Illich’s and our own ideas of conviviality and why it makes sense to use this as a frame for a postcapitalist conservation paradigm.

These four main positions on ‘saving nature in the Anthropocene’ form a simplified heuristic characterization of the current conservation debates. As the book progresses, we will complicate this picture and offer necessary empirical, political and discursive nuances to the different approaches, including our own alternative of convivial conservation.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

The book’s structure is straightforward. In the next chapter, we provide a brief recapitulation and an update of the ‘great conservation debate’ and how this now encompasses contemporary mainstream conservation as well as the two main radical alternatives of new conservation and neoprotectionism. This leads us to a more grounded appraisal of what we argue are the two foundational issues in the debate: the nature–culture dichotomy and our contemporary capitalist development model.

Next, in chapters two and three, we explore these two foundational issues in more depth in order to highlight and reflect on important nuances in the debate. Chapter two explains the problematic ‘nature’ and the origins of the nature–culture dichotomy. It focuses first on the dichotomy’s central role in the Anthropocene conservation debate, especially in relation to central conceptions of ‘nature’, ‘wilderness’ and ‘rewilding’. From there, the chapter turns to the first core argument of the book: the nature–culture dichotomy and our contemporary capitalist development model are historically deeply intertwined and continue to reinforce each other. Chapter three continues this analysis by delving more deeply into the close and long-standing linkages between capitalism and conservation. This leads to the second core argument of the book: conservation and capitalist ‘development’ have historically been closely intertwined but the nature of this relation is rapidly changing in ways that are important to understand.

Chapter four starts by discussing the consequences of the core arguments developed in chapters two and three. Here, we contend that both new conservation and neoprotectionism contain untenable contradictions in their common neglect of the close (historical) intertwining of capitalism and the nature–culture dichotomy. This, however, does not mean they lose all of their radical and political potential. The chapter argues that this potential is significant and that it needs to be harnessed by connecting it to other fields that have long engaged more radical ideas about conservation, especially political ecology. It concludes by developing a coherent set of theoretical premises on which to ground an alternative radical proposal. Chapter five is dedicated to developing this alternative and outlines its practical and political implications.

We conclude the book by arguing why we believe the alternative of convivial conservation is the most optimistic, equitable and, importantly, realistic model for conservation for the future. In doing so, we emphasize that while the term ‘convivial conservation’ may be new, many of its premises are not. Numerous indigenous, progressive, youth, emancipatory and other movements, individuals and organizations have long been working on, and engaged in, alternative conservation practices and ideas that include elements of what we propose here. We pay tribute to these in the intermezzo after chapter four. And while we may not be able to do justice to them all in a short book, we present convivial conservation as a scientifically grounded, political platform and paradigm that aims to build on, through and with these many past, current and no doubt future examples of alternative conservation practices and ideas.

The ultimate purpose of this platform and paradigm is to help make political choices clearer in this particular moment of time, what we will refer to as the ‘Trump moment in conservation’: a moment in which radical choices are no longer ‘coming’, but are being made all around us all the time.²³ Convivial conservation delves into this political fray with the hope of adding to others to (re)direct the choices that are being made in a more hopeful and just direction. And to be clear: these choices are foundational. As the following chapters show in detail, the anthropocene conservation debate touches on the foundations of the relations between humans and the rest of nature. This is why we need to go to their roots, as from these roots emerge the possibilities for hope.