The discussion in the preceding chapters shows that the three major conservation perspectives we have outlined and discussed – mainstream conservation, new conservation, and neoprotectionism – present contradictory and ultimately self-defeating positions. Yet, in highlighting the deficiencies of mainstream conservation, both of the new, more radical perspectives call our attention to important issues that must be addressed in their full complexity to lay the groundwork for developing a more tenable conservation strategy. Part of this entails looking beyond the complexity of the arguments themselves and to place the debate in relevant broader contexts. Accordingly, this chapter argues that, while there is a need to point out where the radical conservation alternatives are erroneous or contradictory, we must, at the same time, appreciate and harness their radical potential. In other words, coming to terms with the Anthropocene conservation debate and understanding its real significance means acknowledging the space it has opened up and the radical political potential it offers. This is crucial before we can present our own alternative conservation proposal in chapter five.
We have structured the chapter as follows. We start by summarizing our overall evaluation of the debate based on the preceding discussions. This is the foundation that will allow us, next, to look more closely at the radical potential of the alternatives currently on the table. We do so in two ways. First, by emphasizing what we call the ‘lived reality’ of the debate, in paying explicit attention to the exigencies of living through the Anthropocene and what this might mean for those who dedicate their lives to conservation. Key here is the idea of the ‘great acceleration’. This concept aims to show how various socio-economic and ‘earth system’ trends all point to the utter unsustainability of the current development trajectory, and so imbue a great sense of urgency and threat. Subsequently, we argue that we need to bring this sense of the overwhelming lived reality of the Anthropocene back ‘down to earth’ by following those authors who are replacing the term Anthropocene by the more apt ‘Capitalocene’. Simply put: humans cannot overcome the ‘age of humans’; we can - indeed we must – overcome the ‘age of capital’.
This leads us to the second way to understand the radical potential of the alternatives, namely how they open up space for and analysis of the political economy of conservation. Phrased differently, the two alternatives have opened a radical potential far beyond their own immediate arguments or domains of intervention. This allows them to be connected and reconnected to other debates – in political ecology, amongst others – that have long sought to understand and realize this same radical potential. We believe and hope that this also offers further impetus to existing and emerging alliances between and beyond the sciences, both to advance our understanding of contemporary conservation and to influence conservation praxis.1 In order to start acting on this potential, this leads us, in the chapter’s penultimate section, to outline several key principles derived from debates in political ecology that provide the theoretical basis for the convivial conservation proposal to follow in chapter five.
EVALUATING THE ANTHROPOCENE CONSERVATION DEBATE
In chapter two, we offered a first attempt to evaluate the Anthropocene conservation debate. After discussing the outcomes of that first attempt in detail, we are now in a position to provide a more comprehensive – even blunt – overall evaluation of the debate.
In stating this, we are not dismissing the fact that mainstream conservation – in many places and different times – has been effective in conserving nonhuman nature. Rather, by emphasizing the historical and contemporary role of conservation in the context of global capitalism, we showed how it has been crucial to, and always part of, a broader political economy that is ultimately unsustainable. And, as mainstream conservation has continued to deepen its relations with capitalism, we cannot but conclude that it is – increasingly brazenly and self-consciously – part of the very problem it addresses – ‘the problem’ here being that many conservation biologists themselves continue to show that the state of biodiversity and ecosystems, in general, is not getting better but getting worse.2
Second, we have a lot of sympathy for the new conservation project to try to break through nature–culture dichotomies, to make conservation work for the poor and to advocate that conservation science be more openly approached and interpreted. Yet, what is inconsistent in this approach is that efforts to resolve these issues would be undermined by new conservation’s embrace of capitalist conservation. As we have shown, it is all well and good to say that one wants to move beyond rigid boundaries and dichotomies, but, as long as capitalist conservation requires these – which, as we have shown, it inevitably must – the whole project becomes dangerously contradictory and untenable. We therefore reject new conservationists’ support for capitalist conservation but seek to retain some of the imaginative energy they bring in striving to move beyond problematic dichotomies and to centralize the need to integrate nature and people by directly addressing inequality and poverty.
Third, we are quite sympathetic to neoprotectionists’ sense of urgency to reverse dramatic decline in global biodiversity and ecosystems and to allow nonhuman nature space to develop free from adverse human influence. Yet we are sceptical of the overall neoprotectionist project because of its extremely problematic proposals of separating people and nature, the blame for biodiversity loss it often attributes to population growth, especially that of the poor, and the other issues highlighted in previous chapters. This, however, is not to say that we reject this position altogether. The arguments that many neoprotectionists make regarding capitalist growth and our consumerist economy are ones with which we largely agree, while their strategies for demanding radical change in times of political lethargy are also inspiring and important. These more empowering directions in their thinking, however, come accompanied or become nullified by their negative and unrealistic proposals to separate people and nature, especially the nature-needs-half proposal, which takes this into extreme territory with potentially massive negative consequences.3
Pertinent for this chapter, therefore, is that there are some elements in both radical alternatives that we agree with and are inspired by and some that we strongly oppose. But, while this conclusion is important, it is not the end of our attempt to come to terms with the Anthropocene conservation debate. It is the transition to necessary next steps.
THE MOMENT OF RADICAL POTENTIAL
To transition from an evaluation of the content of the Anthropocene conservation debate to its radical potential it is important to first pinpoint – and partly rehearse – exactly whence this radical potential emanates. As mentioned, both the nature–culture dichotomy and the links between capitalist development and conservation have been foundational throughout the history of conservation. In calling attention to these issues the radical proposals point to the core of what contemporary mainstream conservation is all about. Yet, one could argue, there are many other discussions, including in political ecology, geography, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and those beyond the academy, that have long addressed these root issues. These have rarely, however, sparked such a massive and consequential debate in conservation circles, nor have they done so within the current context of the Anthropocene discussion. Hence, the radical potential derives from the fact that a specific group of actors have pointed to these issues within a specific overarching context.
Regarding the former, the crucial point is that the core participants in both radical alternatives come from the ‘inside’ and are still tightly connected to mainstream conservation. The main proponents of both new conservation and the neoprotectionist position have earned their stripes in conservation theory and practice and occupy, or have occupied, key strategic positions in central institutions and in academic or professional networks. The pressing question, then, is why these insiders have now concluded that mainstream conservation is no longer sufficient and needs to be radically challenged. While we cannot be certain, there is one key element that we believe goes a long way to explaining this: the current empirical realities that conservationists confront on a daily basis. Both new conservationists and neoprotectionists believe that science tells them that certain core ideas and ideals of mainstream conservation need to be challenged, particularly due to the fact that the alarm indicators for biodiversity and ecosystems do not seem to be improving despite tremendous, longstanding and increasing mainstream efforts.4 And, clearly, it can only take so long before certain actors can no longer deal with the increasing gap between vision and execution and start questioning not just the latter but also the former.5
This brings us to the specific context within which the Anthropocene conservation debate has erupted. The fact that the debate has triggered such a massive, consequential dispute demonstrates a deep unease with several core principles of mainstream conservation and how these are translated into conservation action. But, then again: critique of mainstream conservation has been around for a long time. And the gap between vision and execution in conservation is also longstanding. Why then, has the debate exploded, from the inside, at this particular juncture? In order to appreciate this, and at the same time to come to terms with the Anthropocene conservation debate on a deeper level, we argue that we must acknowledge not just the fact of the debate in and of itself, but the elements that combine to allow for this moment of radical potential. These elements are the ‘lived reality’ and the political economic context of the Anthropocene. It is the combination of these two elements that will allow us to appreciate the broader spaces and potential currently opening up within and beyond the debate. We therefore discuss these two elements in turn.
LIVED REALITIES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
In the introduction, we briefly discussed the radical challenges raised by the concept of the Anthropocene, especially the way it has rendered nature (even more) inherently social or ‘human’ and how it forces conservationists to rethink and contextualize science. But there is another crucial element to the Anthropocene debate, one that not only touches on political economic questions on an abstract level, but on a very personal, experiential level. This can best be explained by reference to ‘the great acceleration’. The great acceleration, briefly summarized, refers to a series of indicators or trends across the socio-economic and earth system realms that all show a very similar ‘hockey stick’ pattern, strongly upward, or accelerating, as shown in figure four. In the words of Will Steffen and his colleagues, ‘the term “Great Acceleration” aims to capture the holistic, comprehensive and interlinked nature of the post-1950 changes simultaneously sweeping across the socio-economic and biophysical spheres of the Earth System, encompassing far more than climate change’.6 What the figures convey is a sense of overwhelming drama and scale: all the important indicators across the entire globe point in the same direction, one that is clearly unsustainable.7
Now, what this portrays is something radical; something so truly massive and staggering that we have a hard time grasping what exactly is going on here. Indeed, much of the Anthropocene conservation debate is geared precisely towards answering and illustrating this very question: what is going on that we now live in the age of ‘the great acceleration’, which is of such dramatic scale that it even transforms the geological structure of the earth itself? Spatially, temporally and in terms of sheer depth and impact, the Anthropocene thesis and the ‘great acceleration’ narrative it is increasingly constructed around are of a scale and magnitude that is virtually incomprehensible. So, imagine having to live through it! The lived reality of the Anthropocene, therefore, is one of sheer overwhelming magnitude; one that only few people claim to fully comprehend.8 The rest of us, in the meantime, have to sit back and ensure that we ‘adapt’ and become as ‘resilient’ as possible in the face of the threats looming over us.
Figure 3. The great acceleration.
Source: Steffen et al., 2015a.
If most of us ordinary citizens need to brace ourselves in the face of the ‘great acceleration’ and the grand yet highly uncertain changes and impacts it will inevitably bring, how must conservationists and conservation scientists feel about all this? Rightly so, it seems, with no small measure of anxiety and angst.9 Indeed, both new conservationists and neoprotectionists agree that the current state of biodiversity in the Anthropocene presents an overwhelming picture, and an overwhelmingly negative one at that. Kareiva and colleagues, for instance, started their influential article as follows:
By its own measures, conservation is failing. Biodiversity on Earth continues its rapid decline. We continue to lose forests in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There are so few wild tigers and apes that they will be lost forever if current trends continue. Simply put, we are losing many more special places and species than we’re saving.10
Neoprotectionists agree with this, but are generally more apocalyptic, arguing that the entire planet will literally be lost unless something drastic is done. Yet, new conservation and neoprotectionism respond very differently to this overwhelming situation. The former embrace the Anthropocene and try to give it a positive spin. The latter denounce the concept and want to reconstruct, reinforce and return to the fortress.
But, while we may disagree with the prescriptions on both sides, it is important to analyze and understand why so many conservationists respond the way they do. So, even if we have thoroughly criticized the half earth plan for being extreme, and for having potentially extreme costs if ever implemented (which would be impossible), we still need to understand why people like E.O. Wilson feel the need to come up with ideas like this in the first place. Why, in other words, he believes that ‘only by setting aside half the planet in reserve, or more, can we save the living part of the environment and achieve the stabilization required for our own survival’.11 Or why Kareiva et al. believe that unless radical change happens, ‘conservation will fail, clinging to its old myths’?12 This is what we call the ‘lived reality’ of the Anthropocene conservation debate, which corresponds with the overwhelming ‘lived reality’ of the Anthropocene era more broadly.13
The challenge, then, is how to get the Anthropocene back down to earth – so to speak – so that we can discuss conservation in its rightful proportions, rather than under the unbearable weight of the ‘great acceleration’. Fortunately, several scholars have already provided the handles to do exactly this. They do so by questioning the term Anthropocene itself.
FROM ANTHROPOCENE TO CAPITALOCENE
The term ‘Anthropocene’ is profoundly unsatisfying. As many scholars have by now argued, it treats ‘humanity’ as a single entity that somehow dominates the entire planet. It obscures and depoliticizes profound differences between (groups of) people with vastly different impacts and claims.14 As argued by Lesley Head, the Anthropocene narrative also suffers deeply from deterministic, linear, even teleological thinking, as though history simply had to lead us to this moment of ‘the great acceleration’. And, importantly for this book, Head also shows that the nature–culture dualism is part and parcel of the Anthropocene narrative. In fact, she argues that:
It is not surprising that the human–nature dualism is so deeply embedded in the narrative, given its deep historical roots in Western thought … embedding of the associated concept of nature in contemporary life … and the fact that industrial capitalism is itself partly constitutive of both the dualisms that we now wrestle with and the Anthropocene itself.15
This sounds familiar. It is, again, the political economy that connects the nature–culture dualism and the evidently dualistic Anthropocene. Indeed, the Anthropocene concept seems to have brought the dualism to new heights (or depths) by elevating one part of the equation to the driving seat of all contemporary change, including that of the geological record. No wonder, then, that some scholars contend that our current era should more properly be termed the ‘Capitalocene’. Yes, they say, a pervasive human influence over nonhuman systems can be seen to characterize this epoch. But this has been most centrally produced by the globalization of capitalist production over the past five hundred years, not by some general ‘anthropos’. Moreover, this dynamic of capitalist production is, by definition, always already both ‘human’ and ‘natural’, something that Jason Moore conceptualizes as ‘world ecology’. How, then, will the analysis change if we switch from the Anthropocene to the Capitalocene? Let us start answering this question by following Moore a bit further.16
There are two basic and integrated elements that we draw from Moore’s work to aid our purposes. The first is historical, the second political. Historically, Moore criticizes what he calls ‘the Anthropocene’s love affair with the Two Century Model of modernity: industrial society, industrial civilization, industrial capitalism’.17 Basically, much historiography around the Anthropocene, Moore asserts, revolves around eighteenth and nineteenth-century industrialization and, in particular, the harnessing of coal and steam power to ignite modern, capitalist development.18 The solution to the ecological crisis, from this perspective, is to curb and limit the use of fossil fuels with the resultant carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other emissions – something clearly visible in the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement, which was widely acknowledged as an attempt to end the ‘fossil fuel era’.19
Moore, in contrast, emphasizes a different historical origin of the current crisis: ‘the remarkable remaking of land and labor beginning in the long sixteenth century, ca. 1450–1640’. This era, he argues, is the beginning of the ‘capitalist world-ecology’, which ‘marked a turning point in the history of humanity’s relation with the rest of nature’. The turning point is not just that early capitalism ‘marked an epochal shift in the scale, speed, and scope of landscape transformation’ across swiftly expanding capitalist geographical terrains, but that this led to a lasting bifurcation in the way humans saw themselves in relation to the rest of nature – the dramatic reinforcement and globalization of the nature–culture dualism.20
This brings us to the political implications of Moore’s intervention, poignantly summed up as follows:
To locate modernity’s origins through the steam engine and the coal pit is to prioritize shutting down the steam engines and the coal pits, and their twenty-first century incarnations. To locate the origins of the modern world with the rise of capitalism after 1450, with its audacious strategies of global conquest, endless commodification, and relentless rationalization, is to prioritize a much different politics – one that pursues the fundamental transformation of the relations of power, knowledge, and capital that have made the modern world. Shut down a coal plant, and you can slow global warming for a day; shut down the relations that made the coal plant, and you can stop it for good.21
Moore’s politics is not focused on how one part of the dualism, ‘humanity’ or ‘anthropos’, has used or transformed specific elements of the other part of the dualism, ‘nature’ or, more specifically, fossil resources. Rather, it is – overtly so – focused on the inherently and historically integrated capitalist ‘world ecology’, which brings together ‘the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the production of nature as an organic whole’. Simply put, the focus for Moore must be on the historic and contemporary relations between power and politics, and for him these are always at the same time ‘human’ and ‘nature’.22
Conservation, as we have shown in previous chapters, has been an inherent part of the historical equations that have led to the rise of the Capitalocene. This means, on the most basic level, that the Anthropocene conservation debate should more accurately be termed the ‘Capitalocene conservation debate’. If we rename it this way, it is clear that the debate opens questions and issues far beyond conservation, nature or the overwhelming grandness of the ‘great acceleration’. Instead, it opens up potential for radically rethinking conservation within and through historical political economies writ large, as well as radically challenging and transforming them towards something new, something infinitely more liveable and positive than the problematic Anthropocene outlook. At the same time, this also means we should not get ourselves stuck in the Capitalocene. The point in highlighting the term should be to move beyond it. The specific reasons for doing so, however, are important.
BEYOND THE CAPITALOCENE?
In highlighting the Capitalocene label, we get closer to doing empirical and analytical justice to historical political economy and to recognizing how it evolved up to this moment. In so doing, moreover, we also have a better frame for understanding the current juncture in the ‘great conservation debate’. But how do we move beyond the Capitalocene (in a dual sense of moving beyond the term as well as beyond the historical period) and hence move the debate forward? Here, recent discussions in relation to Moore’s central concern of moving resolutely beyond the nature–culture dichotomy may help. Two strands of recent thinking on the Anthropocene are especially important for us here: work that, like Moore, aims to employ the Anthropocene discussion to resolutely do away with the nature–culture dichotomy and recent critiques of some of the theoretical predilections this has led to.
In the first strand, two major creative statements responding to the Anthropocene discussions that aim to move beyond the nature–culture dichotomy are Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World and Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble. Both books build on the by now familiar critiques of the Anthropocene concept. In Tsing’s words: ‘although some interpreters see the name as implying the triumph of humans, the opposite seems more accurate: without planning or intention, humans have made a mess of our planet’. Starting from the premise that ‘precarity is the condition of our time’, Tsing argues that the disasters expected to emerge from the great acceleration are already here and that we need to accept this. At the same time, she directs our attention to the ‘possibilities of life in capitalist ruins’, especially that which grows on the ‘edges’ of the system. Tsing focuses on mushrooms as one key example of life springing up in edgy places and traces their ‘cultural-and-natural histories’ through ‘entanglements’ and ‘ephemeral assemblages’.23 This resonates with new conservation’s focus on ‘new natures’, for example by paying attention to the importance and possibilities of alien and invasive species. While his subtitle ‘why invasive species will be nature’s salvation’ is overstated, Fred Pearce’s basic point, like Tsing’s, that we need to pay heed to the promise of unexpected reinvigorations of nonhuman life is important.
Like Tsing, Haraway challenges us to accept a basic reality of capitalist ruins while simultaneously encouraging us not to leave it at that. She even conceived the awkward term Chthulucene to make her point. This term, according to Haraway, is meant to ‘name a kind of timeplace for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth’. What she means by this is that ‘there is a fine line between acknowledging the extent and seriousness of the troubles and succumbing to abstract futurism and its affects of sublime despair and its politics of sublime indifference.’ Her term Chthulucene is thus an act of alternative realism, a deliberate attempt ‘to cut the bonds of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene’. Our project, and especially our attempt to develop an alternative conservation paradigm, shares this objective of trying to encourage acts of alternative realism. At the same time, the Chthulucene, Haraway emphasizes, is a project for imagining different ‘pasts, presents, and futures’ while we ‘stay with the trouble’ of the Capitalocene.24
In interventions such as these, Tsing, Haraway and many others open space to think, sense and act differently – potentially outside or on the edge of ‘capitalist ruins’. This is important for understanding the Anthropocene conservation debate since it too provides space to think and act outside or on the edge of the capitalist ruins of lost or degraded biodiversity, ecosystems and landscapes.25 Yet, the terms with which we think through the debate matter, and here we need to distance ourselves from one of the main theoretical foci of Tsing, Haraway and Moore (as well as many others): their creative yet ultimately unconvincing attempts to move beyond the nature–culture dichotomy. The core of the problem we believe is simple: as these authors – and many others in a variety of theoretical ‘turns’ from new materialism and actor–network to the ‘more–than’ or ‘post’-human - attempt to move beyond the dichotomy in order to show that nature and society are deeply integrated and related, they often push too far. In the process, they erase (too) many critical distinctions, with dangerous consequences. Two are particularly important: the lapse into radical monism and the infinite extension of agency.
The new left hybrid theories are fond of references to cyborgs, quasiobjects, bundles, and imbroglios: anything that suggests the blurring of boundaries between humans, animals, and machines … In the Anthropocene, however, such a perspective easily takes on a reactionary frame insofar as it removes sharp contradictions, replacing them with nebulous imbroglios.26
And precisely this – removing contradictions, based on actual and meaningful distinctions – is dangerous. Erik Swyngedouw and Henrik Ernstson, basing their arguments on work by Frédéric Neyrat, write that ‘the effort to contain and transcend the nature–society split or dualism through ontologies of internal relationality disavows the separation upon which relationality is necessarily constituted’.27 Or as Michael Carolan phrases it, ‘once we begin to see these two realms as being ontologically inseparable … we lose analytic force to distinguish between different types of hybridity’.28 In our words: especially because nature and society are inherently interrelated do we need to distinguish between their different elements; only in this way can we meaningfully understand the relations that constitute their inter-relation. If everything is ultimately and only one and the same, then we can neither understand the whole nor the parts.
Consequently, and precisely because nature and society are so deeply integrated, we cannot dissolve the nature–society dualism, according to Foster and others. They contend that we need to see both integration and separation to be able to identify the problems caused by human-induced environmental change. As Andreas Malm phrases it, ‘the very notion of anthropogenic causation requires one of independent nature.’ As such, he asserts, ‘It seems to follow that some sort of distinction between “society” and “nature” remains indispensable’ for both research and activism concerning environmental politics.29
But the problem goes further. As Andreas Malm shows, much contemporary theory believes not only in hybrids and imbroglios, but also decentres agency away from humans to encompass everything, including animals and matter itself.30 This is often framed as radically ‘distributing’ or even ‘democratizing’ agency.31 And, while animals indeed have agency,32 there is something disturbing about removing a unique form of political agency from humans, as this ‘evacuates the world of recklessness, improvidence, liability, responsibility and a whole range of other moral parameters’. If coal itself becomes co-responsible for climate change, as some argue, we can no longer hold anybody or anything accountable for (continued) global warming.33 Even worse, the result could be ‘to undermine all genuine radical praxis, implicitly supporting the status quo’.34 Thus, while we should aim to overcome the nature–culture dichotomy by recognizing the inherent interrelations between nature and culture–society, we should not lapse into monism and in the process extend agency to a degree that attributing causality to human action becomes meaningless and completely depoliticized. Rather, as Hornborg asserts, ‘we need to retain the capacity to distinguish between sentient actors pursuing their purposes, on the one hand, and objects that simply have consequences, on the other.’35
The way out of this conundrum is an emphasis on critical realist dialectics, where ‘parts and wholes are mutually constitutive of each other’.36 Yet, while Malm, Foster and others provide a critical corrective to much current theory that seems to have lost itself in hybrids and imbroglios, we need to be careful that we do not go back to wholly separating nature and culture afresh, including the disturbing racial, colonial, gender and other consequences that this often entails.37 Instead, we must place ourselves firmly within the tension that the co-constitution of nature and society represents, which is always a political balancing act that responds to forces of power and other relationships. The term ‘Capitalocene’, for us, helps to highlight those relationships that are crucial to comprehend the contemporary moment in which conservation finds itself. And hence we need to take these relations seriously – as we tried to do in previous chapters – in order to move beyond them.
Yet stating this and actually stimulating concomitant action are different things, the latter being overambitious for any text like the present one. That is why, in the next sections, we have more modest - though still rather ambitious – goals: first, to explore the potential for radical connections between different ‘environmental studies’ literatures in more generic terms, along with the ability to overcome these radical differences without depoliticizing them; and, second, to distil from this and the previous discussions in this book several key principles that inform our own radical alternative proposal of convivial conservation.
So far, in this chapter, we have focused on understanding the radical possibilities in what we should now be calling the ‘Capitalocene conservation debate’, while (hopefully) doing justice to the ‘lived’ and political economic realities underpinning the ‘great acceleration’ of the Capitalocene. But to perceive and locate radical possibilities and to act on them are two different things entirely. We believe that one basic starting point for the latter would help significantly: deeper, more numerous and more radical connections between the sciences, particularly those natural and social sciences dedicated to the big environmental questions of our time. This call is not new. Several others have made similar calls recently.38 We want to build on and reinforce these, focusing in particular on generating engaged and effective political alliances.
Basically, what these authors are saying is that the full breadth and depth of the environmental social sciences and humanities (ESSH) is often not appreciated by the physical sciences, including those focused on conservation. Geographer Noel Castree and colleagues, for example, argue that ‘a particular framing of “human dimensions”’ research on the environment has ‘become normalized in those places where leading researchers are, today, discussing the future of GEC [global environmental change] inquiry’. They continue:
The frame’s major presumption is that people and the biophysical world can best be analysed and modified using similar concepts and protocols (for example, agent-based models). A single, seamless concept of integrated knowledge is thereby posited as both possible and desirable, one focused on complex ‘systems’. The frame positions researchers as metaphorical engineers whose job it is to help people cope with, or diminish, the Earth system perturbations unintentionally caused by their collective actions.
Castree et al. believe that global environmental scientific inquiry should instead be connected to ‘a wider body of ESSH scholarship according to a model of “plural, deep and wide interdisciplinarity”’, which can ‘serve a representative function by making visible several actual, probable and possible realities that are relevant to different constituencies’ and which consequently ‘will serve a deliberative function by encouraging decision-makers and other stakeholders to make what some have, affirmatively, called “clumsy” choices among substantive options for change’.39
Following Castree et al.’s lead, we have also developed and now offer our argument (and, indeed, our book) in relation to this same model, which we believe should be the basis for engaged, fractious-yet-positive, meaningful interdisciplinary politics. And, we believe, the time seems right for such radical connections.40 As political ecologist Hannes Bergthaller, and colleagues, also argue:
The emergence of the environmental humanities presents a unique opportunity for scholarship to tackle the human dimensions of the environmental crisis. It might finally allow such work to attain the critical mass it needs to break out of customary disciplinary confines and reach a wider public, at a time when natural scientists have begun to acknowledge that an understanding of the environmental crisis must include insights from the humanities and social sciences. In order to realize this potential, scholars in the environmental humanities need to map the common ground on which close interdisciplinary cooperation will be possible.41
In conservation, too, there have been serious attempts to analyse and bridge the social and natural sciences.42 Most recently, Nathan Bennett and colleagues have started mapping ‘common ground’ for conservation. They provide a thorough overview of the ‘conservation social sciences’ and argue that these ‘can be valuable to conservation for descriptive, diagnostic, disruptive, reflexive, generative, innovative, or instrumental reasons’. Yet, while their overview and aim is instructive and important, their conclusion that conservation social sciences should be a ‘vital component, along with the natural sciences, for effective conservation decision-making during planning, implementation and management’ remains too instrumental for our taste.
In their acknowledgement that ‘designing and implementing conservation social science projects and communications strategies that will enable real improvements in conservation practices or outcomes is not a straightforward task’, we believe that they do not emphasize nearly enough that conservation is not just about effective ‘planning, implementation and management’.43 Rather and mostly, it is about politics. For us, making radical connections is about much more than planning, implementation and management. It is, most importantly, about creating (more) effective political alliances that challenge vested (capitalist) power structures and interests.44
The goal, then, is to not only stimulate more debate across the sciences, but to actively create networks and alliances across disciplines for taking political action. We do not expect all conservation biologists to become social scientists or vice versa. But we do expect many conservationists and social scientists who want to change the current situation to become much more openly and brazenly political. Here is where we draw inspiration from neoprotectionism. Many working in this paradigm have understood this point and have become ‘bold’ and more politically active. As Reed Noss and colleagues phrase it: ‘our task is not to be beaten down by political reality, but to help change it.’45
Now, this might seem to create some problems, as we are not saying that simply any political action is what is needed. Our analysis makes it quite clear that we fundamentally differ from neoprotectionists concerning where political action should lead. The question is whether certain fundamental differences should stop political alliances altogether. We think not. As long as there are also certain fundamental agreements on issues, they might be linked strategically in the political arena.46 And, here, we might actually see more opportunities to liaise with neoprotectionists than with new conservationists, since the former do increasingly want to radically challenge the political economic roots of our current environmental problems. Above and beyond that, fundamental differences and even antagonisms should be vigorously, openly and respectfully debated, as it should ideally be in a democratic dispensation.47 This book is our attempt to be part of this type of democratic politics. But the point about differences and its relation to political action goes much further.
RADICAL DIFFERENCES?
One crucial point about dealing with ‘radical differences’ is that in doing so, we are taken far beyond (already complex) differences between scientific traditions and disciplines. Perhaps, even more importantly, we arrive at different ways of understanding, seeing and knowing the world around us. This, in turn, leads to different visions for political action and how to understand, deal with and confront entrenched power – a point that we will come back to in the next chapter. Hence, underlying the three radical proposals – those of neoprotectionists, the new conservationists, and our convivial conservation proposal – are fundamental, radical differences on conceptual and other levels. And these radical differences are, to make matters even more complicated, based on and steeped in academic traditions and fields with their own radical differences.
Take our own main field of academic inquiry, that of political ecology, which has turned into a thriving field with many fundamentally different interests, ideas and political, social and academic viewpoints. How can we point towards so many different voices, opinions and ideas about the world and say that this will help us further? Yet, this is exactly the argument we want to make! We need to make explicit and be open about these differences, and debate them scientifically and politically. Or, phrased from a negative angle, by not acknowledging or accepting (fundamental or other) differences, one hides the politics associated with them – a strategy that is anti-political and a dynamic that is in itself a major interest of many political ecologists.48 The key, therefore, is to open up politics; to be open about politics, about differences of interest and power, and from there build a political platform which will allow us to move beyond these differences. So, how then do we deal with radical differences and on what basis can we move forward in building this platform? Our strategy is to render explicit the set of principles upon which we base our alternative of convivial conservation.
Our proposal of convivial conservation is erected on four key statements that form the pillars of our framework. They are not meant as exhaustive. Rather, they are offered to clarify and render explicit the theoretical underpinnings of the book’s two main objectives: an evaluation of the Anthropocene conservation debate and the development of a creative alternative to the radical proposals currently on the table. The following discussions will therefore explicitly refer back to the earlier discussions and look forward to chapter five on convivial conservation.
1. Reality is constructed, but this does not mean that ‘everything is relative’
This statement is derived from the influential discussions concerning the construction of nature that raged in political ecology and conservation studies in the 1990s and 2000s. The social construction of reality thesis was then – and still often is now – regarded as heresy in the conservation and wilderness communities.49 Yet the debate has not gone away, and, indeed, it should not. For us, the way we understand and act upon socio-ecological realities is that they are constructed by myriad individual and collective social, political, economic, cultural and other configurations. It follows from this that the scientific endeavour to understand and interpret reality is also always constructed and political and therefore subject to different power and interest positions.50
At the same time, we do not want to fall into the trap of (absolute) relativism. The point that reality (along with nature, science, and so on) is socially constructed does not mean that some things are not more truthful than others. They certainly are, including with good science at its basis. As Michael Carolan contends, ‘although we may never be able to know reality as it is, we can say that because reality is real, some approximations of it can be better than others. Indeed, if the Green critique is to possess any force we must be able to say this, for without being able to make some reference to an objective reality “out there,” such a critique is greatly undermined’.51 Conservation is and always has been a construction in the context of different histories, forces and dynamics, most notably the long and uneven rise of global capitalist development. But this does not mean that the problems conservationists respond to are not real. They are. Yet placing them in context might suggest different ways forward, as we will show in the coming chapter.
It is interesting to note that in discussions on the Anthropocene, several scholars are again starting to press home the ‘reality’ of the current era more forcefully. Interestingly, this includes people like Donna Haraway, Noel Castree and many others who have been frequently placed within the social constructivist camp.52 Important politically is that in this shift different ‘sides’ come out of their comfort zones: from the social sciences, there has to be a commitment to let go of those destructive forms of constructionism and hybridism that leave (any) ‘reality’ hanging or dissolve any meaningful distinction and so disable more effective political action; while from the natural sciences, there has to be a commitment to accept that science and reality are always constructed and political. Or to put it more bluntly: natural scientists should start acknowledging and dealing with the fact that reality is always constructed, while social scientists should start dealing with the fact that reality is not only constructed. James Proctor thus enjoins us to
accept the paradoxical truths that nature is, so to speak, both autonomous and socially constructed, that our knowledge of nature speaks to both secure objectivity and slippery subjectivity, that our caring for nature is based on values fully arising from our particular and hence limited perspectives yet also fully aspiring to some claim of universality – that, in short, we must all found our environmental ethics in a dual spirit of confidence and humility, with one leg standing surely on solid rock and the other perched tentatively on shifting sands.53
This will be difficult. But we are committed to the conviction that longstanding dynamics of mistrust, tension and misunderstanding among the sciences concerning how to view reality should be confronted head-on. From this position, one thing we can do is first look at ourselves and be frank about where many social scientists have failed, something poignantly summarized by John McNeill and Peter Engelke:
Strangely enough, just as the Great Acceleration was shifting into high gear, academic social scientists and humanists chose to retreat from grimy and greasy realities into various never-never lands. They found all manner of discourses worthy of their studied attention, revelling in the linguistic and cultural ‘turns.’ But the extinction of species, the incineration of forests, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – all this seemed unworthy of their power, interesting only for the discourses it aroused. Meanwhile, one species of social scientists, economists, jilted reality in favour of a different fantasy, one of ever-more-abstract modelling based on universalizing assumptions of individual behaviour and state conduct, casually ripped from all historical and cultural, not to mention ecological, context. Social sciences and the humanities, especially in their most prestigious bastions, showed themselves scarcely more attuned to the advent of the Anthropocene than governments floundering with energy policy and climate politics. The intellectual flight from reality made it slightly easier for those in positions of power to avoid facing up to it.54
While some elements here may be overstated, the sentiment and political implications of this statement are clear and we support these wholeheartedly.
2. ‘Nature’ and ‘society’ are dialectically integrated
This sentiment and its implications logically lead to a particular perspective on the nature–society dualism so central to this book. In the face of social constructivist critiques, Michael Carolan, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster, Andreas Malm and others assert that we must retain the sense of a realm of nature independent of human perception as the basis for political analysis and action. After all, as the preceding quotation makes clear, it is precisely activity in this natural realm that is currently confounding convictions on both left and right that we can and do control this realm in both discourse and practice. Richard Lewontin, similarly, describes of the history of plant science:
In an attempt to increase the productivity of crops, plant engineers make detailed measurements of microclimate around the plant and then redesign the pattern of leaves to increase the light falling on the photosynthetic surfaces and the available carbon dioxides. But when these redesigned plants, produced by selective breeding, are tested it turns out that the microclimatic conditions for which they were designed have now changed as a consequence of the new design. So the process must be carried out again, and again the redesign changes the conditions. The plant engineers are chasing not only a moving target but a target whose motion is impelled by their own activities.55
It is this type of conflict between human representations and the workings of some reality non-reducible to (though not wholly separate from) such representations that the concept of an external nature seeks to capture. This is important for political action, for as Carolan asserts, ‘by neglecting biophysical variables we risk undermining our ability – and ultimately our legitimacy in the eyes of the public – to inform public policy.’56
But an important caveat is in order: we need to be careful when we generically refer to this biophysical reality as ‘nature’ tout court. By doing so, we risk reinstating a false sense of distinction between it and ‘society’. Both categories, after all, are homogenizing abstractions concealing great diversity among and within the entities they designate. Moreover, as we emphasized above, they are co-constituted every step of the way. Hence, we somehow need to preserve a sense of an independent reality without equating this with nature, while at the same time describing the relationship between this reality and human thought and action not as dualistic but as dialectical.57 Simply put, in a dialectic, things, processes and systems are never just what they seem; they are always part of broader sets of relationships whereby patterns of unification and differentiation are bound in perpetual struggle. Hence, to do justice to the two radical conservation proposals emanating from the Anthropocene conservation debate, we needed to take some time – in chapters two and three – to reinsert and clarify the sets of relationships that conservation is part and parcel of, and how these have changed and continue to do so over time.
A corollary of this statement is that it renders any theoretical or scientific act political, as biologists Levins and Lewontin proclaimed in their 1985 book The Dialectical Biologist.58 It also reinforces the point we made earlier that science can never be the sole arbiter over conflicts concerning what needs to be done, where, how and by whom. Instead, this premise, more positively, opens up the promise of politics, as philosopher Hannah Arendt stated: the promise of political connections and (ensuing) political action to change the way we see, view and act on reality.59 Clearly, this is the basis of our own radical proposal in the next chapter.
3. Conservation is an element within a broader process of ‘uneven geographical development’
Conservation is not the opposite of development. Rather, as argued in chapter three, it is a form of development – not simply of ‘people’ but of dialectically integrated natures and societies. This, however, as we also showed, did not hinder conservation from being frequently posited as separate from, and indeed, against development. The way we resolved this paradox in the book is by understanding (dominant forms of) development explicitly as capitalist development. From this perspective, we argued that conservation has historically experienced various relations to development, including: (1) as a bulwark to development; (2) to safeguard development; (3) for development; and (4) that it is synonymous with development. The current premise extends this argument into the recognition that conservation is one particular element within a broader process of ‘uneven geographical development’. Conservation, in other words, has always been part of, and indeed contributed to ‘the extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes across and between spaces of the world economy (at all manner of different scales)’.60
This statement also implies, as we have insisted throughout, that conservation and capitalism are historically intertwined. Therefore, making sense of key elements of contemporary neoliberal capitalism is crucial to understanding conservation and its challenges and prospects.61 At the same time, this statement also means that we must be critical of contemporary capitalism, as capitalism values nature and conservation in particular ways that undermine the objectives of the conservation movement. Conservation must therefore start ‘developing’ differently, based on alternative values. This point is so important that it is at the centre of our fourth and final statement.
4. Value matters
Value in conservation is not just about the worth of natural resources, but also about systems of valuation. A key question thus becomes: How should we ‘value’ nature within a global context dominated by neoliberal capitalism and how can we build systems of conservation in relation to this? Many in the conservation community, as we have shown, are content to move along with the capitalist valuation of nature in order to supposedly render nature ‘visible’ to economists, CEOs and governments. Many are also highly sceptical of such valuation, such as a majority within the neoprotectionist camp but also others, including in mainstream conservation. But what are we talking about precisely when we talk about value and valuation? A key issue in this debate relates to whether we should prioritize intrinsic or extrinsic values; whether nature should be appreciated for its inherent ‘existence value’ or rather for its utility to humans. This, however, is a false dichotomy. Instead of prioritizing one or the other, we should see differential values as dialectically integrated as per statement two above.
But what do we mean by ‘value’? We see value as ‘assigned worth’, which is a politically constructed process subject to power, context and interests. If value, then, is only seen within one set of power relations, hence narrowed to what it should mean under and within capitalism, we get to the fundamental problems noted above with respect to capitalist conservation and the nature–culture dichotomy. After all, value under capitalism should always be ‘in motion’; seeking yet more value, as an endless process of accumulation. This, not coincidentally, is the very definition of ‘capital’. In turn, assigning worth by turning nature’s value into ‘value in motion’ – or natural capital – entails not merely describing ‘what is already there’ but rather prescribing a radical transformation of the meaning of nature and our relation to it.62 This is, ultimately, what continues to increase pressure on people and nature, through processes of intensification, and what is increasingly sparking new waves of ‘green wars’.63
What the radical conservation alternatives offer us is the potential to radically rethink the possibilities of value in relation to conservation. The key, moving forward, is to build different value systems, away from capital as ‘value in motion’.64 Part of our proposal in the next chapter, therefore, is to reinterpret and reclaim the notion of value away from capital towards what we call embedded value.
CONCLUSION
This chapter is entitled ‘radical possibilities’, which we believe are amply present in the time we live in. While this may seem contradictory to some, it is especially true after the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US President (as we discuss further in the conclusion). What we mean here is that the radical conservation alternatives and some of the issues they put on the table provide important new space in the great conservation debate to discuss issues that could not really be discussed – openly and politically – under the hegemony of mainstream conservation and its ‘let’s-just-get-on-with-it’ attitude and urgency. With the onset of the Anthropocene debate they now can, and we have sought to take advantage of this new space in order to significantly enlarge it. In this chapter, then, we have further conceptualized and analysed this space, in order to transition from a space of radical possibility to the formulation of a viable alternative.
Two key elements and related arguments stand out here. First: the need to acknowledge both the lived reality and the political economy of the contemporary Anthropocene/Capitalocene/great acceleration moment. Second, the need to lay out differences on the table and openly discuss them. It is important to note that in being open about differences we also highlighted several aspects that are clearly shared across the sciences concerned with human–nonhuman relations. The most important of these is the fact of difference and that the only way to deal with this – above and beyond doing good science – is through acknowledging, engaging with and even celebrating politics. Based on these deliberations and observations, as well as the analysis presented in earlier chapters, we posited several principles that serve as a prism for ‘alternative realism’. So, what if we peek through this prism? What could we see? This is the subject of the next and final chapter. However, before we move there, a short ‘intermezzo’ is necessary; one that helps lay out the ‘sea of alternatives’ alongside which we present our proposal.