Towards Convivial Conservation
Mainstream conservation as currently practised is not adequate to save nature in the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, or simply the twenty-first century. This is why we have witnessed the dramatic and rapid rise of radical proposals away from foundational aspects of this approach. At the same time, we have shown that these radical proposals are highly contradictory and therefore unable to provide a logical, coherent or practicable alternative to mainstream conservation. In fact, our contention is that the current radical proposals are not nearly radical enough. This is because they continue to sustain elements of contemporary mainstream conservation that stand in the way of a truly productive, positive and realistic way forward. Neoprotectionists try to sustain a problematic nature–culture dichotomy while new conservationists defend an unsustainable capitalist economy that reinforces this same dichotomy.
Both proposals consequently fall short in two ways: they fail to transcend the limitations of contemporary conservation in pursuit of a genuinely radical position capable of providing an adequate response to the grave threats to sustain biodiversity within the Capitalocene; they also fail to fully recognize and hence do justice to both the lived realities and the political economic context that contemporary conservation comes out of, is part of, and needs to take into account in moving forward.
Having said this, we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are important positive aspects in both radical proposals that need to be nurtured and brought together into a more coherent alternative. This chapter aims to develop this alternative, which we call convivial conservation. Inevitably, this will be an exercise with many loose ends. The chapter is therefore as much a call for further development of alternative radical proposals to conserve nature beyond the Capitalocene as a proposal in itself. Yet, even with these necessary disclaimers, we will conclude that this proposal, however nascent, is already a more realistic and positive way forward for conservation than those currently dominating the Anthropocene conservation debate.
The statements posited towards the end of chapter four help to provide a logical and coherent frame to develop an alternative radical yet realistic proposal. In the following chapter we build on these to outline the core principles of our convivial conservation position. Our aim in doing so is decidedly not to present a fully worked out or foolproof plan, let alone a magic bullet solution. One simple reason for this is that real-world historical change does not work like that; actual change only happens through social, political and other types of struggle. This is why we will present a theory of change that integrates short and long-term actions as co-constitutive steps that acknowledge, break down and transform institutionalized forms of power and politics geared towards the status quo.
A second reason why we do not present a fully worked out proposal relates to the intermezzo which argued that convivial conservation should be seen as one of many confluent streams contributing to a much larger sea of alternatives. This makes our effort here somewhat easier, as we need only focus on one stream – the one concerned explicitly with conservation. Hence, our discussion in this chapter will address how conservation can become but one part of and contribute to a broader postcapitalist movement.
A third and final reason for deliberate partiality is that many of the ideas in our convivial conservation alternative are not wholly new. While we do not know of a comprehensive proposal that sets out a postcapitalist conservation under an overarching banner, there are many attempts, in practice and research, towards the same overall goal. From the various consortia supporting ‘indigenous and community conservation areas’ known as ICCAs and several International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) committees to academic contributions like Ashley Dawson’s attempt to imagine a ‘radical anti-capitalist conservation movement’,1 there are alternatives and novel ideas out there, and we build upon them.
Yet, at this point, these proposals lack an overarching frame which could be used to unite them and contrast them with the other radical proposals that are being aggressively promoted with pithy titles and slogans (Nature Needs Half, Natural Capital Coalition, and so on). Our aim here is thus, in part, to bring together the progressive forms of conservation already in development, describe the key principles towards which we believe they (can) collectively build, and place all of this within the context of an overarching societal transformation that is ultimately needed to move us beyond the Capitalocene and its degrading impulses. Hence, we present the following in the hope that numerous streams together will lead to something powerful enough to challenge vested, institutionalized and vicious capitalist interests, cultures and habits.
We start with a more detailed conceptualization of convivial conservation, followed by our overarching vision. After that, we will render the vision increasingly pragmatic by discussing how to get ‘from here to there’, including our theory of change. We end the chapter by proposing several short-term propositions and actions.
CONVIVIAL CONSERVATION
In its core, our conceptualization of conviviality is necessarily post-capitalist and non-dualist. Regarding dualisms, our understanding of ‘convivial’ is meant to build on its etymological roots of ‘con’ (with) and ‘vivire’ (living) or ‘living with’. Hence, it is in line with our second theoretical principle, which fundamentally envisions a conservation that does not separate humans and nature – as the mainstay of conservation through protected areas has long done and continues to do - but instead rejects this false dichotomy. It focuses on a conservation that, inspired by Esther Turnhout et al., enables humans to truly ‘live with’ biodiversity.2 This is in line with the spirit of the new conservation position. In contrast with this position, however, convivial conservation emphasizes not economic cost–benefit calculation but affective affinity and other ways of relating with nonhumans irreducible to destructive capitalist ratio.3
Regarding the question of postcapitalism, we build explicitly on Illich’s conceptualization of conviviality. In 1973 he argued that ‘a convivial society would be the result of social arrangements that guarantee for each member the most ample and free access to the tools of the community and limit this freedom only in favour of another member’s equal freedom’.4 More concretely, Illich argues that he chose
the term ‘conviviality’ to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.5
Some of the wording Illich employs now sounds slightly archaic, like the ways that (industrial) ‘tools’ ‘degrade’ modern people. But what Illich points to is the turning around of the ‘deadening’ forces of industrial capitalism and the ways in which it stifles creativity, imagination, judgement and ‘the right to the fundamental physical structure of the environment with which man has evolved’.6 Indeed, he very explicitly refers to ‘biological degradation’ as the first of ‘five dimensions on which the balance of life depends’.7 This balance, he argues, has been thoroughly upset by the tools designed by industrial capitalism. This is not to say that Illich believes that life is a balanced affair. What he is after is a balance between the tools and possibilities that we use and an idea of the good life that these may both enable and threaten. In his own words: ‘a tool can grow out of man’s [sic] control, first to become his master and finally to become his executioner’.8 He provides the following examples to illustrate:
An increase in social mobility can render society more human, but only if at the same time there is a narrowing of the difference in power which separates the few from the many. Finally, an increase in the rate of innovation is of value only when with its rootedness in tradition, fullness of meaning, and security are also strengthened.9
To extrapolate this logic: the use of modern tools of conservation – including technologies, finance, ‘smart’ systems, governance and management – is of value only to the extent that they allow for more conviviality between humans and between humans and the rest of nature. Mainstream conservation and its tools do not provide this value anymore, nor do the dominant radical alternatives. A new vision is needed.
Ivan Illich saw his broader project as one of ‘convivial reconstruction’; the reconstruction of society so as to enable humans to lead good, frugal lives. The convivial reconstruction of conservation depends on and aids this broader project currently (and historically) pushed and supported by many post-colonial, indigenous, emancipatory, youth, progressive and other movements, organizations and individuals around the world.10 For this we need to allow ourselves to envision several major, progressive transformations that might characterize postcapitalist convivial conservation. We propose five key elements of a convivial conservation vision.
1. From protected to promoted areas
The default mode of conservation has commonly been about protecting nature from people, particularly through protected areas. Elaborate systems have been set up to govern who has access to (parts of) protected areas and how these (parts) ought to be used (see the IUCN classification system). This is about putting the focus on continuously marking and emphasizing the boundaries between human and nonhuman nature rather than celebrating the many inherent links between them.11 Under convivial conservation, this would be reversed. The principal goal of special conservation areas should not be to protect nature from humans but to promote nature for, to and by humans.12 They should transition from protected to ‘promoted areas’, although not in capitalist terms whereby they are marketed on the basis of capital accumulation and are hence exploited via (eco)tourism and so forth (see below). Rather, promoted areas are conceptualized as fundamentally encouraging places where people are considered welcome visitors, dwellers or travellers rather than temporary alien invaders upon a nonhuman landscape. This can only take place within an overall context focused not on exploitation or productivity but on conviviality: the building of long-lasting, engaging and open-ended relationships with nonhumans and ecologies.
This proposition includes an important discursive shift. ‘Protected from’ sounds negative,13 while promoted by and for is positive, and democratic.14 Some positive steps in this regard have been made, all around the world, including, especially, by the ICCA coalition of indigenous and local peoples. But more is needed, especially seeing how some hard-won democratic experiments have recently been turned back in the fight against poaching and the broader militarization of protected areas.15
It is also important to continue to emphasize, along with many neoprotectionists and other conservationists, all that is incredibly valuable in and about current protected areas. This cannot be lost as the discussion progresses, and hence ‘promotion’ does not mean that every action is possible or desirable.16 The value of biodiversity requires promotion, too, especially vis-à-vis values linked to (unnecessary or excessive) extractive and destructive types of enterprise. But unlike neoprotectionists, we do not think this value will survive by positing it against humanity and ‘population growth’, as it frequently is.17 The deep value of nature for humans only makes sense through and by humans.18 Hence, the only solution to protecting nature’s value is to build an integrated (economic, social, political, ecological, cultural) value system that does not depend on the destruction of nature but on ‘living with’ nature.19 Under such a value system, debate will continue to centre on which activities are permissible in ‘promoted’ areas, and which must of necessity remain excluded in the interest of sustainable democratic development. But these different activities will not be seen as trade-offs or opposites but the logical extension of a broader mindset that recognizes the need for the promotion of conviviality.
2. From saving nature to celebrating human and nonhuman nature
The next element follows logically: we must move away from the idea that conservation is about ‘saving’ only nonhuman nature. The main actors that humans save nonhuman natures from are other humans.20 Yet since humans are part of a larger ‘natural’ whole that contains nonhumans as well, we get into tricky territory when speaking about ‘saving’ nature from humans, reinforcing the very nature–society dichotomy we seek to dismantle. In fact, we have long suspected that something must be terribly wrong if we have to put boundaries between ourselves and nonhuman nature; it means, essentially, that we have to protect ourselves from ourselves. This contradiction can only be overcome by challenging the idea that conservation is ultimately and only about saving nonhuman nature.
We need to start focusing on saving and celebrating both human and nonhuman nature equally. This may sound strange, even wrong, to many conservationists and political ecologists alike. Indeed, in the social sciences, there are strong tendencies and ‘turns’ towards decentring the human and putting human and ‘more-than-human’ on an equal footing.21 While we certainly see reasons to take the ‘more-than-human’ much more seriously, this does not necessitate that the human and ‘more-than-human’ must therefore be given wholly equal standing. In line with our first theoretical principle and following David Harvey we need a ‘broad agreement on how we are both individually and collectively going to construct and exercise our responsibilities to nature in general and towards our own human nature in particular’.22 Harvey, following legal scholar James White, refers to this as ‘learning to be distinctively ourselves in a world of others’.23
Opening up the question of ‘human nature’ may be somewhat ambitious. But it is necessary, even if only briefly. As Marshall Sahlins ‘modestly’ concluded: ‘Western civilization has been constructed on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature. Sorry, beg your pardon; it was all a mistake. It is probably true, however, that this perverse idea of human nature endangers our existence’.24 Sahlins refers to the idea of human nature as competitive, self-interested and rational, the stereotypical ‘homo economicus’ underlying neoliberal forms of governance that even ‘21st century economists’ do not believe in anymore.25 This reductionist idea of human nature has been responsible for creating needs, wants and actions that ‘endanger our existence’ and are most certainly not convivial. Opening up the question of human nature, therefore, means asserting that there are ‘various ways in which we can “be ourselves”’;26 that we can construct needs, wants and actions differently, in line with sustainable conviviality. It means, fundamentally, challenging the ‘dangerous’ processes of capitalist alienation that change and go against human nature.27
The fact that these distinctively relate to human nature does not mean it excludes nonhumans. A certain form of human exceptionalism, in other words, can be entirely convivial. Indeed, a certain form of human exceptionalism appears necessary if we are to retain a focus on the particular threats posed by human action to nonhuman survival at all rather than merely attributing this to the workings of a diffuse ‘assemblage’. As Kate Soper asserts, ‘Unless human beings are differentiated from other organic and inorganic forms of being, they can be made no more liable for the effects of their occupancy of the ecosystem than can any other species, and it would make no more sense to call upon them to desist from destroying nature than to call upon cats to stop killing birds.’28
While a ‘posthuman’ perspective seeks to challenge human ‘exceptionalism’, consequently, an alternative perspective – again in line with our first theoretical principle – would assert that humans (both as a species and as individuals) are in fact exceptional and unique; but that all other species and organisms are, in their own way, special and unique as well.29 Decentring the human, in other words, may be best accomplished not by homogenizing and levelling all forms of life but on the contrary by insisting on the unique nature possessed by each of these myriad forms. The key, then, would be to highlight those characteristics unique to humans, or at least that humans possess in unique quantities, that have facilitated the devastation we have wrought upon the rest of the planet (while also avoiding the pitfall of homogenizing a highly variegated humanity). Chief among these must be our capacity to function as intentional, political actors.30 Convivial conservation allows for celebration of this diversity while the ‘saving’ of this diversity is in recognition of how differential needs, wants and actions of humans and nonhumans are always related and tied to broader political economic trends and dynamics.31
3. From touristic voyeurism to engaged visitation
As the way we promote and save nonhuman and human nature changes under convivial conservation, so the way we engage, see and experience nonhuman nature must also change. Increasingly, we engage ‘wild’ nature, and especially parks, through commodified tourism experiences. As we now know, tourism, as one of the largest capitalist industries in the world, is not the great saviour of nature it is often made out to be. It is both indirectly and often even directly responsible for the destruction of nature.32 But capitalist tourism is about more than just the destruction or conservation of nature. It is also a way of seeing and understanding nature, one that can be shorthanded as a type of voyeurism: peeking ‘at’ nature through commodified tours, spaces, sites and other experiences; often more with the aim of ticking boxes and fulfilling ‘bucket lists’ (been there, done that, seen the ‘big five’, Niagara Falls, or whatever else) then of creating meaningful long-term engagement.
This is not to say that the latter does not exist. But the problem with a focus on ‘conservation-funded-through-tourism’ is that meaningful long-term engagement with nature seems to increasingly become an elite privilege rather than a democratic possibility. Visiting or owning ‘pristine’ nature is very often (and has long been) an elite activity, imbued with problematic racial, gender and class divisions.33 And even if capitalist tourism enables or leads to long-term deep engagement with species or ecosystems, this is all too often used as escape from, not confrontation with or developing alternatives to the destructive dynamics of global capitalism.34
Under convivial conservation, the emphasis will be on long-term democratic engagement35 rather than on short-term voyeuristic tourism or elite access and privilege. Does that mean that short-term tours or trips will become impossible? We do not know. But it has become patently clear that we simply cannot afford to continue to fly around the world in climate-changing airplanes in order to ‘contribute’ to conservation through (eco)tourism. The alternative is to encourage long-term visitation focused on social and ecological justice,36 preferably in relation to the natures closer to where we live.
Not all of this is new, and some of it was foreseen by Illich:
The richer we get in a consumer society, the more acutely we become aware of how many grades of value – of both leisure and labor – we have climbed. The higher we are on the pyramid, the less likely we are to give up time to simple idleness and to apparently nonproductive pursuits. The joy of listening to the neighborhood finch is easily overshadowed by stereophonic recordings of “Bird Songs of the World”, the walk through the park downgraded by preparations for a packaged bird-watching tour into the jungle.37
The emergence of the Anthropocene has brought these issues into stark relief. As a growing discussion of ‘Anthropocene tourism’ asserts,
tourism policy and practice in the Anthropocene … implies that tourism needs to be measured up in specific relation to the boundaries and limits vis-à-vis the Earth and humanity at the global scale … [It is] necessary to deepen the debate on sustainability in and of tourism by addressing the existing problems from the perspective of the geophysical forces of humanity and the Earth in the Anthropocene.38
Hence, Higgins-Desbiolles, amongst others, insists that achieving a truly ‘sustainable tourism necessitates a clear-eyed engagement with notions of limits that the current culture of consumerism and pro-growth ideology precludes’.39 It is just this sort of engagement that we endorse here.
4. From spectacular to everyday environmentalisms
Capitalist conservation interactions with nature, including but not limited to tourism, are focused on what Jim Igoe calls the spectacle of nature.40 Inspired by Guy Debord, the ‘spectacle of nature’ means that ‘images become commodities alienated from the relationships that produced them and consumed in ignorance of the same’.41 Conservation, in other words, is increasingly communicated and consumed through images of the very idealized, spectacular natures that are increasingly disappearing in reality. This, however, is also increasingly more difficult to see due to what Igoe refers to as a ‘double act of fetishization’:
The conjuring of possibilities undertaken in these spectacular productions requires a double act of fetishization … First the relationships and connections that they present are themselves fetishized, since their larger historical, social and ecological contexts are hidden from view. Next, and more fundamentally, the connections and relationships that allowed for the selective concealment of these larger contexts are also hidden from view. These spectacular productions thus become their own evidence, continuously referring back to themselves in affirmation of the realness of the world(s) that they show their viewers.42
Capitalist conservation depends on particular forms of communication that often centre on the ‘spectacle of nature’.43 These types of communication are often (necessarily) superficial, anti-political and devoid of context and, despite many promises to the contrary, new media in practice often reinforces this dynamic.44 Under convivial conservation we need to move away from the spectacle of nature, and instead focus on ‘everyday nature’, in all its splendour and mundaneness.45 Indeed, we argue that it is in mundaneness rather than spectacle that we can find the most meaningful engagement with nature. Living with nature means appreciating nature on an everyday level,46 including all the manifold material and discursive implications that arise from this statement.
5. From privatized expert technocracy to common democratic engagement
The fifth element of our vision is that convivial conservation means that all people have to be able to (potentially) live with all nature.47 Hence, the way significant nature is often managed, namely in a top-down fashion based on technocratic expert opinions, is inherently alienating for most of us (which comes through in its most extreme form in E.O. Wilson’s vision of allowing most humans to only peer at the ‘other’ side of earth – nature’s half – through micro-cameras).48 This, again, implies a need for a much more democratic management of nature, focused on nature-as-commons and nature-in-context rather than nature-as-capital. This point is important for conservation generally, and perhaps especially in relation to the extinction crisis. As authors such as Tracey Heatherington, Genese Sodikoff and Ashley Dawson argue, technoscience may save some species from extinction, but will not save them as part of a broader amalgam of ‘living landscapes’ that do long-term socio-ecological justice to both humans and nonhumans.49 ‘Saving’ species, they all emphasize, is only meaningful within manifold broader social, cultural and environmental contexts.
Following our theoretical principle that ‘value matters’, a key issue here concerns the operationalization of ‘value’. Convivial conservation grounded in radical ecological democracy would require that the value of natural resources be determined locally rather than in abstract global (and increasingly algorithm-based, computerized) markets. This value would then need to be realized in ways that do not promote the commodification of resources but rather provide autonomous funding streams that allow qualitative, multidimensional values to be preserved and promoted. As we have argued at length, capitalism cannot mediate interests and values in a transition towards a more sustainable society. This is, fundamentally, because it ultimately prioritizes one type of value above all others: ‘value in motion’, that is, ‘capital’. By contrast, convivial conservation cannot and will not prioritize capital in making decisions about resource allocations, how to manage promoted areas, how to celebrate nature or how to organize engaged visitation.
So, instead of asking how conservation can lead to more (necessarily monetized) ‘value’ in the future, we should start by asking how a (necessarily non-monetized) value is embedded in the here and now and in which contexts this value receives local and extra-local meaning. In short, we need to refocus from value in motion, or capital, to what we could call ‘embedded value’. The latter’s logic is not based in market-based commodity exchange whereby nature has to ‘provide services’ to humans to be protected, but receives its worth from and through humans and nonhumans ‘living with’, understanding, appreciating but also politically confronting and agonistically struggling with each other (through cultural, artistic, experiential, affective or other non-commodified or non-monetized forms). This requires, quite simply, that all conservation decisions are taken in terms not of their contribution to (global) capital (value in motion, and ultimately economic growth, GDP and monetized well-being) but in terms of value embedded in daily life and non-capitalist needs, wants and actions.
ICCAs are a good example here. According to Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend and Jessica Campese, ‘ICCAs embody many material and non-material values. Specific relationships and values should be identified by their custodian communities, not by outsiders,’ and may include: ‘secured livelihood’, ‘social resilience’, ‘cultural identity’, ‘spiritual significance’, ‘pride and community spirit’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘links to community history’, and ‘continuance’ for the host community as the ‘custodians of bio-cultural diversity’.50 This, of course, is not to say that all is good and well with all ICCAs – as Borrini-Feyerabend and Campese also emphasize.51 But the challenges and political nature of ICCAs are recognized by the consortium, and this, together with their convivial vision, is crucial for moving conservation forward.
FROM NATURAL CAPITAL TO EMBEDDED VALUE(s)
These five elements of a convivial conservation vision enable what would still be a form of conservation but one very different from current practice, namely a use of some parts of nature that is sustainable (that is, not geared towards eternal quantitative growth and accumulation), whilst being part and parcel of nature. It would entail living with other aspects of nature rather than physically or discursively being alienated from it. Indeed, conservation itself would be integrated and (re)embedded into daily life and all other domains of policy and action rather than something we do only in protected areas or when donating to an NGO.52 Moreover, convivial conservation moves away from capital-inspired ways of rendering visible the value of nature, and instead become a part of broader structures of sharing the wealth that nature provides. As has been emphasized by non-Western, indigenous and other communities and scholars for centuries already, the wealth of nature does not lie in how it enables the accumulation and privatization of capital; it lies in the manifold ways in which it allows all humans to live convivial lives. Sharing this wealth must therefore always trump its privatization and subsequent accumulation.
How to do this will always be political, subject to interests, needs, histories and power dynamics. It will not lead to equilibrium or perfect sharing, including in a postcapitalist world. But it will allow better sharing, certainly if human natures over time grow accustomed to different systems of needs, wants and actions. In the process, we need to start ‘seeing’ nature differently. Nature, under conviviality, is always already visible. To ‘render nature’s values visible’, as the capitalist TEEB project – The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity - aims to do, would thus be unthinkable. The importance of nature – the web of life, the basis of all life – should never have to be ‘made’ visible. Living with nature means that it is visible by definition. ‘Money’ – the universal equivalent that is supposedly the tool to make nature ‘visible’ under capitalism – only renders nature visible on spreadsheets and through necessarily simplistic, technocratic decision-making models outside of relevant contexts. This renders nature unidimensional – solely what it is worth to humans-as-investors.53 It does not – cannot – provide the kind of lived relationship to multidimensional (human and nonhuman) natures that convivial conservation foresees.
But ‘visible’ is not the right word for conviviality, as we are focused here on the levels of being and becoming. As humans are, so nature is – and vice versa. As humans become, so does nature – and vice versa. Living with nature, in many ways, is acute: it directly triggers or stimulates the senses – positively and negatively – and as such enables a continuous, direct feedback loop (we might call this metabolism!) between humans and the rest of nature. Convivial conservation is therefore about different uses, frames and forms of embeddedness of multiple natures. It is about not setting nature apart but integrating the uses of (nonhuman) natures into social, cultural, and ecological contexts and systems (i.e., re-embedding).
In each of the five elements of the vision, important practical steps can immediately be taken that help to bring a world of convivial conservation into being. But before we get there, let us reflect on the process of transition itself.
FROM HERE TO THERE
So how do we get to convivial conservation? This is the next major element to be discussed: our theory of change, or how we view the process of transition from here to there. We highlight three important elements: how to deal with power, with time and with actors.
DEALING WITH POWER
In the previous chapter, we already alluded to the radical differences that exist with respect to the question of power. How should we pursue social change and what should our politics and struggles be aimed at? On these questions, progressive critical theorists differ fundamentally, as illustrated by the contrasting positions of Rosi Braidotti and David Harvey. Braidotti sees ‘unopposed’ capitalism as the biggest problem we face: ‘the “new” ideology of the free market economy has steam-rolled all oppositions, in spite of massive protest from many sectors of society, imposing anti-intellectualism as a salient feature of our times.’54 Harvey agrees and argues that ‘something different in the way of investigative methods and mental conceptions is plainly needed in these barren intellectual times if we are to escape the current hiatus in economic thinking, policies and politics’.55 Yet the two differ greatly in their responses to these issues. Braidotti asserts:
The awareness of the instability and the lack of coherence of the narratives that compose the social structures and relations, far from resulting in the suspension of political and moral action, become the starting point to elaborate new forms of resistance suited to the polycentric and dynamic structure of contemporary power. This engenders a pragmatic form of micro-politics that reflects the complex and nomadic nature of contemporary social systems and of the subjects that inhabit them. If power is complex, scattered and productive, so must be our resistance to it.56
This is precisely what Harvey argues against when he writes:
What remains of the radical left now operates largely outside of any institutional or organized oppositional channels, in the hope that small-scale actions and local activism can ultimately add up to some kind of satisfactory macro alternative. This left, which strangely echoes a libertarian and even neoliberal ethic of anti-statism, is nurtured intellectually by such thinkers as Michel Foucault and all those who have reassembled postmodern fragmentations under the banner of a largely incomprehensible post-structuralism that favour identity politics and eschews class analysis. Autonomist, anarchist and localist perspectives and actions are everywhere in evidence. But to the degree that this left seeks to change the world without taking power, so an increasingly consolidated plutocratic capitalist class remains unchallenged in its ability to dominate the world without constraint.57
A central problematic – at least in leftist academic writing – thus concerns how to build resistance to the power of capitalism and its ‘commodification of everything’. Is it about micro-politics or about ‘taking (structural) power’? Power, as conceptualized in this book, is both structural and dispersed in micro-settings. Hence, we agree with Braidotti that power is ‘complex, scattered and productive’, but to leave it at that, which she and many poststructuralists do, is a fundamental mistake that indeed plays in the hands of structural capitalist power itself.58 Slavoj Žižek rightfully notes that a focus on an ‘irreducible plurality of struggles’ runs the risk of renouncing ‘any real attempt to overcome the existing capitalist liberal regime’.59
In our writing, we have consistently argued for a co-constitutive understanding of structural and post-structural understandings of reality, as well as the co-constitution of structural power and the power of agency.60 Hence dispersed forms of resistance matter, but these alone will never achieve our aims. Naomi Klein reinforced this position when she recently acknowledged that her own earlier celebration of the ‘movement of movements’ comprising the alterglobalization protests at the turn of the century was problematic in not also calling for the organization of these movements into a cohesive overarching platform. This she now argues is badly needed, particularly if we want to deal with the global threat of climate change.61 Again, this is not to dismiss the importance and potential of micro-political struggles, which are essential to effecting change on the ground. The point is that these must be accompanied and inspired by more organized efforts to effect large-scale structural change as well for them not to be undermined by these same forces. Whether this ‘organised effort’ must be through the state, as Harvey asserts, is uncertain (although certainly not the contemporary capitalist state), but, certainly, power needs to be organized across different levels of governance.62
DEALING WITH TIME: A TWO-STEP STRATEGY OF CHANGE
Any act of change must – whatever else it is – be a political struggle and a strategy to deal with institutionalized forms of accumulated power across both material and discursive domains. As Peck shows, this was actually a core component of neoliberals’ own theory of change in the tireless promotion of their perspective over the course of many decades.63 Milton Friedman famously proclaimed,
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.64
The remarkable prescience of this statement implies that change requires both promotion of a coherent conceptual structure vis-à-vis the status quo and transformation in the underlying material structures able to create a new opening for this promotion.
This is no different in conservation. Despite neoprotectionists’ occasional and implicit assertions to the contrary, conservation is not somehow separate from the broader capitalist world order but is integral to it. This is why we believe a two-step strategy for dealing with change over time is most realistic, one that does not separate but rather combines (radical) reformism and radical, systemic change away from capitalist modes of production, valuation, exchange and living. Hence, we are talking about a short(er) term and a medium-to-long(er) term strategy enacted at the same time. One part of the change strategy must always be accompanied by the other, as the one needs to lead to, and be inspired by, the other. Obviously, this is anything but easy, as Aili Pyhälä and colleagues along with many others show, but it is necessary nonetheless.65
In the short term, we must do what we can to subvert the logic of capital in micro, meso, and macro-political practice, through state, non-state and individual action simultaneously. In this, we take inspiration from the community economies perspective pioneered by Gibson-Graham, which points to the ways that postcapitalist practice can be effected in myriad forms within the overarching capitalist order.66 In the medium to longer term, immediate actions must be accompanied by larger-scale efforts to conceptualize and build ‘alternative economic spaces’, based not on the logics of capital and economic growth but on those of equality and radical ecological democracy. Likewise, for conservation, the short-term actions described below always need to be inspired by and work towards the convivial conservation vision outlined above.
The actual outcomes of these interlinked strategies of change (for nature and conservation) depend on complex, contrived and contradictory processes that no one can foresee. Hence, this will require political expediency, shrewdness, organization and persistence. But we do believe that this two-part strategy is the most realistic to start building an appropriate context for a productive future for global conservation.
Within structures of power across space and time, different actors take different positions. These cannot be homogenized or generalized easily (if at all). And yet, it is important that we try to do so. Following our theoretical principle that conservation is an element within a broader process of ‘uneven geographical development’, we need to acknowledge the variegated political positions of different actors within a fundamentally ‘uneven’ conservation politics. This will allow us to politically account for the relation between local actors who live in or near conservation spaces or spaces of conservation interest, and the actors who in terms of their position in the global capitalist system live far from these but put much pressure on them – and on biodiversity in toto – nonetheless. After all, a major contradiction of conservation has long been that the focus of interventions is commonly on local actors (‘community based’) because they have a direct link to certain species or ecosystems.67 Conservation interventions focus much less often on extra-local actors responsible for adding to the general pressure on biodiversity. This needs redressing.
To start doing so, distinguishing four different categories of global conservation actors is a useful starting point (see figure 4).68 Actors within these four categories have different (historical and contemporary) types of responsibilities and roles within and related to conservation. The local residents who often live in or with biodiversity and who (still) depend on the land for subsistence comprise category 4: the rural lower classes. They are often (seen as) poor and the ones who have least contributed to global problems of biodiversity loss (historically and contemporarily). Yet they are most often targeted in conservation interventions and forced or ‘incentivized’ to change their livelihoods to meet biodiversity targets.
Category 3 consists of the general urban, semi-urban or semi-rural middle and lower classes throughout the world, who do not depend directly on the land for subsistence and are mostly involved in global labour and consumer markets that they participate in but have little control over save for their consumption choices. Via this consumption they do heavily influence biodiversity in many places. But they are often not part of or specifically targeted by conservation interventions, except as potential donors. When they are actively targeted by conservation organizations, they are mostly considered consumers rather than political agents.
Next, we distinguish land-owning capitalist classes such as major capitalist farmers and/or landholders for large agro-industry. They are often targeted by conservation, not as part of community-based interventions, but as partners in the conservation effort or as targets of (so-called) activist interventions or forms of resistance. In many places (Indonesia, Brazil, Central Africa and so forth) these classes are also part of violent frontiers of land conversion, and hence difficult to target and engage with.69
Then there are the global upper classes that are, politically, economically or otherwise, at the helm of the global capitalist system.70 Interestingly, these elites are often both urban and rural – owning multiple properties, including in rich residential areas in cities to be close to elite political–economic circles, but also with second, third or even more properties in rural, semi-rural and biodiversity-rich spaces, including large estates and private reserves.71 Upper class elites are often recruited as funders or included on boards of conservation organizations, but rarely targeted as part of conservation initiatives aiming at behavioural or livelihood change, as they are often either seen as unreachable (they live behind walls, security systems, or simply remotely) or as doing good for the environment through their philanthrocapitalism or other forms of conservation related charity (including through the privatization of nature and parks and so on). Hence the upper classes have a contradictory double role as they are at the helm of the system that keeps the pressure on biodiversity intense and high, while considered either untouchable or even seen as championing conservation through their large donations to conservation causes, NGOs and similar organizations.
Lastly, we consider the role of state actors, who historically have been among the most important players in enforcing conservation in most places, particularly through fortress strategies that have commonly relied on state financing and direction. A key question for leftists has long been the role of the state in progressive politics. While many Marxists have viewed the modern state as primarily a tool of elite capitalist interests,72 others take a more nuanced view of the relationship between state actors and capitalist processes.73 There is also the issue of whether political action should engage or attempt to wholly evade the state. Addressing both issues, Foucault famously argued that ‘the state, no more probably today than at any other time in its history, does not have this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality, nor, to speak frankly, this importance,’74 and anarchists tend to follow this view in seeking to avoid state-centred politics entirely.75 Marxists, by contrast, have always understood the state as a vital target of revolutionary action, a perspective reiterated by Harvey in stating, ‘There is also a big problem on the left that many think the capturing of state power has no role to play in political transformations and I think they’re crazy. Incredible power is located there and you can’t walk away from it as though it doesn’t matter.’76
The history of conservation shows that different states have performed in dramatically different ways, with some effectively nurturing biodiversity, others also working to combat poverty in relation to this, and still others acting ineffectually or even counterproductively with respect to either or both aims. The state must therefore be approached not as a homogenous monolith but rather, following Foucault, as a complex entity that ‘does not have an essence’.77 Yet we also agree with Harvey that tremendous power remains concentrated in state agencies; hence convivial conservation must engage with, enlist or emanate from these agencies as important potential mediators among the various actors previously discussed when this can support its goals. How this can best proceed – or whether convivial conservation can be pursued more effectively independent of the state apparatus – will depend on the particular state in question and broader struggles in relation to changing the politics and organization of particular states.
While empirical reality is much more complex than our figure can depict, its broader point is that convivial conservation should not aim only or even mostly at category 4 actors, as it tends to do at present. Rather, it should target actors according to their differential responsibilities and accountabilities in relation to both the direct and indirect impacts their actions have on biodiversity, as well as the relative power these actors possess within broader structures of capitalist accumulation. Paraphrasing Jason Moore, it is about identifying, targeting and ‘shutting down the relations’ that produce biodiversity loss.78
In this way, we might reverse the model of ‘polycentric’ governance proposed by Ostrom and others.79 In this standard model, governance is seen to start with local people and then must consider their embeddedness within overarching structures of governance with which they must contend to assert their space for self-governance. In our vision, by contrast, effective conservation governance would start by addressing actors in these superordinate levels in order to first target their actions, then work down towards the local people in direct contact with the biodiversity in question. In this way, the pressures exerted on local conservation initiatives can be proactively addressed at their source rather than merely retrospectively in relation to their impacts.
We should clarify that this governance model pertains only to the ways that conservationists frame and confront threats to conservation, not to how decision-making regarding effective conservation should proceed. As previously stated, the latter must embody deeply democratic forms of engagement in which local actors are placed at centre stage. A comprehensive conservation politics, therefore, must simultaneously centre local people as key decision-makers in conservation planning and decentre them as the central targets of interventions aimed at fostering behavioural change.
This, we believe, is the only way to do democracy and history justice: to place the possibility for democratic arrangements in larger structures of power that highly influence whether and how these will succeed (or not) in practice. Phrased differently: merely focusing on local democracy without taking into account the power of ‘outside’ actors is naïve. The difficult tension between centring and decentring local people is therefore the right place to situate the democratic politics of convivial conservation.
FROM THE LONG TERM TO THE SHORT TERM: CONCRETE ACTIONS
Convivial conservation calls for consideration of new ways to transform mainstream forms of economic development as neoprotectionists contend, while at the same time transcending human–nature divides as promoted by new conservationists. What types of concrete, short-term actions befit this approach and might enable us to move closer to the broad vision outlined earlier? We suggest several actions, with different registers and foci. These derive logically from the foregoing but are anything but exhaustive (and indeed not intended to be, as argued above).
1. Historic reparations
Convivial conservation needs to start by doing justice to conservation’s history, especially the dynamics of dispossession and displacement that long characterized protected area formation and are still ongoing today in many places. Historic reparations – mainly directed at category 4 actors – are thus in order, which we believe need to be focused on the relations between people and their land, the biodiversity conserved on or through this land and the benefits communities do or do not derive from these. Importantly, these benefits, and the reparations, are material and non-material: acknowledgement of past injustices and the (re)distribution of resources need to go hand-in-hand.
Ideally, reparations mean that local communities receive their land back or at the very least get co-ownership of or co-management responsibilities over it. We recognize that these are anything but straightforward issues, especially since the land, the dispossessed peoples and the contexts in which these function have changed over time, and often drastically so.80 Moreover, the value and needs of the biodiversity itself also need to be taken into account. These considerations can lead to myriad outcomes that must be worked out in context-specific ways. Regardless of the contextual specificities, however, a concern with historical justice and thorough decolonization needs to pervade convivial conservation moving forward, with special attention for the ways in which indigenous and other (previously) marginalized peoples themselves lead and inspire different forms of resistance to the violence brought about by the sixth extinction crisis.81
2. Conservation basic income
Above and beyond historic reparations through repossession of land and resources we advocate a ‘conservation basic income’ for all communities living in or next to important conservation areas. A conservation basic income (CBI) is a monetary payment to individual community members living in or around promoted areas that allows them to lead a (locally defined) decent life. We consider this the conservation equivalent of a ‘basic income grant’ that is the hallmark of the new ‘politics of redistribution’ within international development circles.82 This should be aimed at allowing people to (hopefully) sustain biodiversity-friendly livelihood pursuits without having to compete within a ruthless global marketplace in ways that undermine the sustainability to which these pursuits aim. CBI should be provided to communities by coalitions of resourceful conservation actors, especially large and small NGOs, states and the private sector. They can be combined with or used to supplement the society-wide basic income schemes that should be implemented more generally. To ensure that enough funds are available for this scheme, these actors should lobby governments to implement a conservation variant of the Tobin or ‘Robin Hood’ tax that seeks to redistribute resources from category 1 and 2 to category 4 actors.
Clearly, there are challenges determining who should receive such a grant, but we believe the policy should be substantial and include both communities of place (residing close to the conservation area of concern) and communities of use (those who have been making regular use of the area). Moreover, these payments are not meant to ‘bribe’ or incentivize communities away from their resources. In this sense, payments must be ‘unconditional’, that is, not tied to fulfilment of certain actions as in conditional cash transfer programmes.83 They are meant to provide rural residents with options for livelihoods that will always need to include use of and interaction with biodiversity and resources (hopefully in a way similar to ICCAs). If any distancing should take place, it should not be between local people and their natural resources, but between local people and other, more powerful actors, so as to provide the former with more autonomy and options for democratic resource control.
To enable these two actions, we suggest that all conservation NGOs set up convivial conservation departments, which could replace or be merged with their current business or private sector liaison departments. This institutional innovation solves two important issues: first, it enables a shift in stakeholders considered most important for conservation NGOs. These should be local people living in or around, or making use of conservation areas, not wealthy companies as it seems is often the case today. Second, it enables a shift in the terms of engagement between corporations and conservation NGOs.
3. Rethinking (Relations with) Corporations
Clearly, the policy of trying to ‘engage business’ on the latter’s terms (by making nature profitable and turning it into natural capital) has failed; hence this relationship needs drastic rethinking. Does this mean that conservation NGOs should no longer work with corporations? Not necessarily, but such engagement should proceed under stricter conditions. One of these is that conservation NGOs should only work with companies if the latter pledge to move towards a different economic model beyond capitalist accumulation and GDP-based economic growth. Ideally, and for the longer term, this should be focused on degrowth, but for the short term this could be towards a circular or doughnut economy.84 If they are not willing to do so, then the NGO should not waste energy on ‘engagement’ as this too often leads to a problematic position of dependency and allows for green washing. Rather, NGOs should spend their energy on building countervailing power from an independent position.
After all, major conservation BINGOs such as WWF, CI, TNC and many others often collude with actors in category 1, while targeting actors in category 3 merely for modest consumption changes and donations and directly targeting category 4 for livelihood restrictions – sometimes even to enable category 1 actors to buy nice biodiversityrich properties! This is not just historically unjust but does little, in the end, to help solve the problem. Hence conservationists’ relations with corporations, and the global upper classes more generally, need to be drastically reconsidered.
We understand that this would inevitably exclude many large corporations that are not (yet) willing to consider the necessity for more radical change towards an alternative economic model.85 But even many corporations and their CEOs should and do realize that their future, as well as that of their children, depends on a healthy planet, which should provide more than enough reason to come on board with convivial conservation. We also realize that this means that many conservation NGOs, especially the large BINGOs, may lose out on currently essential sources of income. But if their main goal is maximum income instead of maximum (or even minimum) benefit for nature, then clearly their priorities are distorted and not deserving of support.
Foregoing such revenue will indeed be a hard choice, as less income would also mean a more limited ability to pay historic reparations and provide for CBIs. But at least in this way NGOs become part of the solution again, rather than being part of the problem. And as a convivial conservation approach takes hold, new sources of funding would likely become available as states and international financial institutions (IFIs) refocus towards supporting CBIs and other forms of redistributive remuneration.
4. Convivial Conservation Coalition
All this should lead to a different global coalition – not a natural capital coalition, but a convivial conservation coalition (CCC) that focuses on the transition towards convivial conservation. The work of the CCC would focus on gaining power not to get money and a small seat at the global table but rather to hold other powerful actors accountable for their actions and to transform them from within. This coalition can help local, place-based actors to diffuse attention away from only category 4 actors to include the others as well. For example, this can be done by mapping reverse ‘commodity chains’ to identify the broader actors responsible for putting pressures on specific areas. An important example here is the Rainforest Action Network,86 which does exactly this, but also others such as Greenpeace.87
As more and more groups and organizations come on board, the coalition can become increasingly influential in shaping global conservation policy and consequently its materialization within local spaces around the world. Yet convivial redirection can never be just top-down. It requires redirection in and rethinking concrete conservation spaces as well.
5. Redirection: Landscape, Governance and Finance
Finally, convivial conservation needs to be translated into concrete pathways for transformation in the governing of space, which we believe entails building: a) conservation landscapes that do not strictly separate humans and other species but promote coexistence; b) different modes of governing conservation in these spaces; and c) alternative funding arrangements that do not rely on market expansion and can – at least initially until redistributive mechanisms start gaining critical mass – work under conditions of austerity. Under convivial conservation, we envision change agents bringing together conceptual innovations from sustainability research and practical experiences from concrete case studies throughout the world to develop, evaluate and strengthen the transformative potential of these three pathways in pursuit of convivial conservation.88
5a. Integrated Conservation Landscapes
Developing conservation spaces that do not strictly separate humans and other species demands a landscape vision wherein we ‘learn to accept both nature that looks a little more lived-in than we are used to and working spaces that look a little more wild than we are used to’.89 Convivial conservation could operationalize this vision in multiple ways and here we provide just two possible examples focusing on human–animal cohabitation, especially when this leads to conflicts, and the relations between humans and larger ecosystems. In both examples, inspired by Molly Scott Cato’s ideas about broader bioregional economies, the production of space will be critical: the ways in which socio-natural spatial designs are related to a complex socio-ecological variety of needs and interests.90
Regarding human–animal cohabitation, we envision a landscape – urban or rural – wherein important species could live, and start by identifying and studying economic and political impediments and opportunities related to potential spatial implications of solving human–animal conflicts in these spaces. This entails two steps. First, the examination of the spatiality of human–environment conflicts and tensions across the landscape and the identification of potential landscape modifications that could aid in solving these. Second, based on this, and through participatory mapping with local and certain extra-stakeholders, conceptualization of various landscape development trajectories that take human-environment conviviality as the central objective. Crucially, these will be based on the fact that many interactions between environments and people already happen in shared, fragmented spaces. Hence, we advocate turning habitat fragmentation into a spatial opportunity for convivial landscape planning.91
Regarding the relation between humans and larger ecosystems, we imagine a similar process but one that focuses on a more detailed planning of how production and consumption activities in particular bioregions (again, both urban and rural, and everything in between) relate to specific ecosystems that provide the (raw) materials for these activities. This, of course, has become so complex in contemporary times, especially in large urban areas, that to try and do everything would be impossible. That is why we advocate starting with specific ecosystems wherein this dependency can be most directly established. These could include (fresh) water, as the distances between water and their use – although they can be large – are often local or regional. As the case of the drought of Cape Town shows – the first major global city that faced an acute water crisis92 – the conservation of water sources is critically important, and depends on complex political–ecological factors, some of which can be directly controlled and some not (such as climate change). But once the availability and sustainable supply of water is more-or-less known, needs and interests can be renegotiated accordingly.93 Another example could be locally specific biodiversity and their needs vis-à-vis inhabited (urban or rural) landscapes.
Importantly, the tools for this planning in both examples should be less important than the socio-cultural and political-economic process that accompanies it. This process maps the needs and interests of stakeholders in the short-term but also how these might change as the overall economy shifts to emphasize degrowth and sharing the wealth. Or, vice versa, as the planning process starts creating awareness of and promoting action on how people in bioregions can contribute to degrowth and sharing the wealth. This is how an active process of changing needs and interests (and hence, human nature), while also challenging the vested interests associated with the creation of capitalist needs and interests, might start.
5b. Democratic Governance Arrangements
Following our landscape approach, governance focuses on three integrated dimensions: economics, politics and scale. Our most basic assumption is that taking into account political and economic histories, dynamics and trends is critical for any transformation to sustainability.94 Convivial conservation in specific landscapes therefore not only studies the political and economic context within which integrated landscape development must function, but also builds convivial conservation into and through local and regional political and economic alliances. This helps to render transformations towards convivial conservation more locally legitimate, sensitive to situated knowledge and hence more socially sustainable. The local, however, is always co-constituted with larger (regional, national, global) dynamics (and vice versa), which necessitates governing scale. Focusing on integrated landscape development with a focus on human-more-than-human conviviality entails identifying those critical links between landscape and ‘higher’ governance scales that (positively or negatively) impact on the former. Convivial conservation thus asks what will be necessary for effective polycentric governance across scale and how actors in categories 1, 2 and 3 need to be engaged.
Following the preceding theory of change, one of these links may entail a reassessment and broader application of community-based conservation (CBC): with flexibility and decentralization focused on social re-embedding instead of (neoliberal) market engagement; with a deliberate change in the meaning of ‘community’ to also include (the rights of) nature (meaning: ‘more-than-human’ forms of affect, companionship and responsibility).95 Researchers have increasingly highlighted the ways that nonhumans help to shape how they are understood and treated by humans.96 This ‘more-than-human’ focus on nonhumans as ‘actants’ has important implications for conservation practice, pointing toward the need for much more sensitivity in terms of how nonhumans are studied and managed in protected areas and other conservation spaces.97 The needs and rights of nonhumans in shaping the conservation practice to which they are subject is an issue that neoprotectionists emphasize,98 as well as a concern in terms of an expansive understanding of democratization in conservation politics. This must be a central focus of attention in convivial conservation, while again recognizing that it is ultimately humans who will have to accept and exercise their unique and unequal agency in deciding how to treat nonhumans who cannot actually participate in democratic deliberations as equivalent subjects.
Living with biodiversity and ecosystems within manifold contexts would entail the deliberate construction of a new form of CBC. This is not a neoliberalized, interventionist type of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). It is one where ‘some of the core values of CBNRM [are] brought back to the fore in both discourse and action: ensuring social justice, supporting material wellbeing and stimulating environmental integrity relative to local conditions and context’.99
It would also require developing deeper forms of participatory democracy in conservation decision-making. While ensuring the ‘participation’ of local ‘stakeholders’ has become a stock requirement of most conservation planning these days, how this is understood varies greatly among projects,100 and is usually implemented only superficially in most.101 Convivial conservation, by contrast, would require that relevant local residents be integrated into planning and decision-making as central voices from start to finish.
5c. Alternative Funding Mechanisms
Critical for convivial landscape development is the generation of funding mechanisms beyond tourism and other market-based instruments (MBIs). This, as mentioned, is in line with a growing critique of market-led approaches and calls for creative new forms of (re) distribution within international development.102 Convivial conservation builds on these by studying the potential for (at least) three interrelated forms of conservation finance that promote redistribution above and beyond the suggestions above. First, we ask how we can cut conservation operating costs. ‘Living with’ nature through the above landscape and governance arrangements requires less funding since it aims to reduce human–animal conflicts.
The transformation to get there, however, takes time. Therefore, a second convivial conservation explores the possibilities of adapting existing conservation and development funding schemes, particularly payments for environmental services (PES) and cash transfer programmes, towards newly envisioned, convivial ends. While conceived as MBIs, many such mechanisms in reality function as forms of redistribution,103 and this dynamic may be built upon in developing the CBI mechanism outlined earlier. These may be supplemented by acquiring investment funds through public bonds or ‘Robin Hood’ taxes which provide capital required to shift systems from high to low costs, with the principal and any interest payments – if necessary - being met by long-term savings of cheaper management regimes.
Third, we envision development of local conservation insurance schemes, particularly when it comes to dealing with more dangerous fauna, funded via preceding and local mechanisms, aimed at generating a further investment pool. Many of these are already in existence or development in various places, and hence should be studied in terms of both their potential and pitfalls. Beyond reparations from human–animal conflicts, this funding can be invested to further stimulate integrated landscape development. Ultimately, to fund convivial conservation we envision a diverse set of revenue sources combining state-based taxation (including public bonds), grants from international donors and individual patrons, insurance schemes, long-term engagement fees, sale of sustainable products, crowdsourcing campaigns, new blockchain technologies, and whatever else can be harnessed in the interest of a broader convivial conservation platform.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we have developed our alternative proposal for saving nature in the Capitalocene called convivial conservation. Or rather, we started to develop this proposal, as one chapter could never do justice to all the intricacies, issues and dynamics that need to be taken into account in such a proposal. One issue that we have, for example, not touched upon is the role of the Internet and online (social) media in enabling (or disabling) transformative change. These have obviously become critical in influencing actual politics and governance dynamics and hence need to be seriously considered and studied as part of the above proposals and reflections. Yet, rather than attempting to do all this and more here, we believe the further development of convivial conservation necessarily needs to become part of a broader collective effort.
In other words, a proposal presented in this form could never be more than a set of loose and incomplete guiding principles whose concrete form would need to be worked out in practice through processes of participatory co-creation. What matters most to us, however, is how the logic informing our proposal has been developed over the course of the book. This logic – steeped in political ecology and the principles outlined in chapter four – helped us to evaluate existing radical conservation proposals while also imagining a more promising alternative. This type of logic and reasoning is inspired by many others and will, we hope, be taken further by others still, in actual conservation spaces, practices and conversations. In fact, this is already happening to some degree, as the various illustrations throughout the book have emphasized.
So, even as we are sensitive to Foucault’s caution that formulating proposals of this sort risks replicating the same hierarchal relations of power one seeks to subvert, we agree with a growing chorus of voices that scholarly engagement can no longer be merely about critique.104 Grounded in a thorough analysis of the problem in question, such engagement must begin to construct or at least envision practicable alternatives as well. In this sense, the proposal outlined here is an act of imaginative ‘alternative realism’ serving to transcend the status quo. What this means will be explicated in our final, concluding chapter.