In this book we have presented and evaluated several radical ideas for saving nature in the Anthropocene. But we never really defined what we mean by ‘radical’. Radical comes from ‘radix’ or ‘radic’, which means ‘roots’ in Latin. Being radical in the original etymological sense of the word therefore has nothing to do with ‘extremes’. It rather means going to the roots. Anyone can understand that the only real solution to the conjoined environmental and development problems of our time must address the root causes of these problems. This meaning of radical entails attaining a coherent and logical understanding of what the roots of our problems are and how they manifest in practical reality. This is why, in chapters two and three, we spent quite some time on theoretical questions raised by the debate on how to save nature in the Anthropocene. This is also why we spent a good deal of space, in the previous chapter, developing our own proposal for ‘convivial conservation’.
But, even if we follow the popular connotation of the term as meaning ‘extreme’, we think that our convivial conservation proposal is actually not that radical. Yes, our proposal goes to the roots of the problem and, from there, tries to build up a constructive alternative, taking into account current material and political realities through our strategy for change in relation to power, time and various actors. Going against the capitalist grain always invites the same type of response, namely that the thinking we have displayed in the last chapters of the book is ‘unrealistic’, fanciful or simply incorrect – that the kind of radical proposal we put forward will never work because, indeed, it is too ‘radical’. Our response is that this is exactly the point: it should be ‘unrealistic’ if realism means ‘capitalist realism’. After all, ideological hegemony functions precisely to ‘define … what is realistic and what is not realistic, and to drive certain aspirations and grievances into the realm of the impossible, of idle dreams’.1 Challenging capitalist hegemony, therefore, entails challenging its definition of what is ‘realistic’ or ‘possible’ as well.
What is truly radical, in an extremely negative way, is to continue down a status quo path knowing it will lead to disaster for most of earth’s inhabitants. Or put differently: a capitalist political economy hell-bent on continuing destructive ‘business as usual’ at all cost – is this not radical?2 Yet if we understand radical as going to the roots in trying to attend to, nurture and care for the roots of life, then current capitalist conservation is not truly radical, but merely extreme. Its proposals for reform do not go to the roots but remain shockingly superficial.
In refusing to confront a capitalist economy that will inexorably diminish the resources it seeks to defend, mainstream conservation is far more radical or extreme than our proposal. It systemically colludes in destroying the radix of life rather than working to nurture it (a point nicely captured by Zapiro in figure 5). And since we have shown that the radical alternatives now on the table – new conservation and new back-to-the-barriers – cannot provide a credible way out of this conundrum, we believe that our radical alternative of convivial conservation is the most optimistic, equitable and, importantly, the most realistic model for conservation for the future. This final concluding chapter serves to elaborate on this argument – not by trying to convince readers that our alternative knows or resolves everything, but that it is part of a broader stream of generative, radical and inspiring ideas, proposals, dynamics and practices that work to build a constructive alternative realism.
ALTERNATIVE REALISM AND RADICAL CHOICES
We began this book by stating that conservation is at a crossroads, and that the emergence of the Anthropocene has made the choices that are facing conservation even more difficult than they already were. This, then, is the basic reality facing conservation: radical choices have to be made. The time is over for incorporating all manners of finding a way forward (through ‘integrated conservation and development projects’, ‘peace parks’, or the like) or for simply seeing ‘what works’ regardless of political context or commitment, although perhaps not in many policy circles or neoliberal, social democratic communities. But even these spheres should (and increasingly do) accept that we can no longer afford to not think about the radical choices we confront. This is not to say that we should not look for complementarities and things that unite. Yet we must always do this in pursuit of the broader systemic change that will be needed to confront entrenched and institutionalized power.
The alternative radical proposals we have discussed go some way towards accepting and accomplishing this. Driven by the credo ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’, they have led an increasing number of conservationists to propose radical changes to our society and economy to halt the current social and ecological crisis. But as we have shown, the full implications of their calls are deeply concerning, both for the changes that they portend and because they do not get to the roots of the problems they address. New conservation points to the limits of a nature–culture dichotomy and the need to address poverty in cultivating effective conservation while neoprotectionists point to the problematic promotion of capitalist conservation. In so doing, however, both positions overlook essential elements of the problems they identify. New conservationists fail to connect their critique of the nature–society dualism with a capitalism that perpetuates both the dualisms and the poverty they wish to address, while neoprotectionists fail to explain how an autonomous nature could possibly be defended from this same capitalism that is grounded upon cannibalizing nature in its quest for continual growth, nor how issues of poverty or social development could be addressed within their nature-needs-half platform.
We thus believe that our convivial conservation alternative is more realistic, simply because it is more logical and consistent with empirical reality than these other two radical alternatives. Following McKenzie Wark, we propose this as a deliberate act of alternative realism that imagines conservation outside of the capitalist box. This we find a liberating exercise that allows for harnessing necessary anxieties triggered by the devastating implications of our contemporary crises in order to unleash positive energy and anti-catastrophic prospects. It is also truly necessary given the political economic context we are in, both in terms of the directions that contemporary capitalism is taking generally, and very specifically with regard to several massive political developments that occurred in 2016, culminating in the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. If our point was not already clear by analysing the general and dangerous directions that contemporary capitalism is taking, then we believe they should become especially clear with what we refer to as the ‘Trump moment in conservation’.3
THE TRUMP MOMENT IN CONSERVATION
We had hoped it could not be possible but it did happen during the writing of this book: Donald Trump was elected and installed as US President. And while the full environmental consequences of his presidency remain to be seen, they clearly do not look good. From his appointments of a climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and ExxonMobile CEO as (erstwhile) Secretary of State to the immediate dismantling of environmental regulations and reinstating of major oil pipelines in his first days in office, Trump has set back an already beleaguered environmental movement quite some way, both in the US and globally. In this way, he demonstrates our earlier point that capitalism can persevere in the short term even as it exacerbates ecological crisis in the long term. Biodiversity is equally likely to suffer under a Trump presidency, but this is not the only reason why his election is significant for conservation. Following from the analysis presented in this book, we argue that conservation faces a much bigger challenge; one that we believe should be referred to as the ‘Trump moment in Conservation’.
Basically, the Trump moment means that mainstream conservation refuses – at its peril and that of the biodiversity it aims to conserve – to properly acknowledge the root causes of biodiversity loss and to support the radical types of responses necessary to halt and reverse this trend. Instead, as we have shown, many conservationists are content – often proudly or ‘pragmatically’ so – to join forces with the economic logics and institutions of destruction behind such terms as ‘natural capital’ or ‘ecosystem services’. In doing so, they might occasionally slow down some biodiversity loss in some places. But at the very same time they strengthen the broader drivers of biodiversity destruction that completely undermine the small gains that might be made (again, see figure 5). This is the conservation equivalent of the ‘Trump’ moment, which can only be tackled by taking and supporting much more radical action. It is on this point that we have, in chapter four, insisted that we not only look at different positions in the Anthropocene conservation debate in terms of their logical contradictions, but also in terms of their importance in demonstrating that discontent with mainstream conservation is growing rapidly. We argue that the time is now to push this movement much further.
Despite their differences, proponents of both the new conservation and neoprotectionist positions agree that the increasingly desperate state of the entire planet’s environment calls for radical new forms of action to defend it from destruction. Trump’s election makes this acknowledgement even more acute. For his election is in fact itself a radical – extreme – response to the increasingly desperate situation in which we find ourselves, environmentally, economically and politically. As part of a disturbing rise of reactionary politics in many places – the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018 comes to mind – it can be seen as an intensification (prompted by the ongoing fallout from the 2008 global economic crisis) of the intimate links between financialization and militarization that capitalism – and particularly its neoliberal variant – has always displayed. And what this signals is that opposition to this type of radical right politics can no longer be content to pursue the conciliatory ‘Third Way’ or more general consensus politics institutionalized by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, either in the overarching political realm or in conservation politics in particular. If we do not become more radical and politically astute, more positive, equal and sustainable futures will be overwhelmed and emptied by the radical groundswell from populist right-wing movements on the ascent in many places.
In terms of conservation, this means that the two radical proposals currently on the table are not nearly radical enough. Indeed, both positions are self-defeating in failing to adopt a consistent, new position that would transcend the limitations of current, mainstream conservation efforts and provide the basis for a truly radical new politics capable of providing an effective counterbalance to the inertia on the (populist) right.
What the Trump moment tells us, most fundamentally, is that the era of moderate, compromise politics, both in the environmental realm and more generally, is over. We cannot appeal to the corporate social responsibility of Coca Cola, Shell, Rio Tinto or other members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Nor can we turn half the earth into a fortress and expect this to be appropriate defence against them. Instead, we must develop and vigorously champion a critical-constructive position that directly challenges the integrated social and environmental consequences of capitalist production and the human alienation from nonhuman processes that this same production promotes.
Fortunately, there are already some insightful models for how to do this that have been marginalized by the polarization between the so-called radical positions currently dominating the conservation debate.4 A movement towards convivial conservation must proceed in lockstep with other burgeoning degrowth, climate justice, slow food, housing, peasant, labour and other movements that – although not perfect – show us the right way forward, both in content and increasingly in terms of the kind of radical politics we believe is necessary.
In this Trumpian moment, therefore, our choices may actually have become rather simple: only by promoting a massive redistribution in control of the earth’s remaining natural resources and occupation of its natural spaces, while transitioning to an economic system that strives for equitable sufficiency rather than ever-increasing profit-seeking growth, can we possibly hope to redress the mounting crisis we are facing. This is very far from where we are right now, but is it any less realistic a vision than herding half the world’s human population onto half of the earth’s surface? Or allowing profit-driven corporations to turn global conservation into a profitable endeavour by, quite literally, turning all of life on earth into accounting sheets?
Whichever stance one takes, it is time for critical conservation scholars to clearly stake out our own position vis-à-vis those outlined above. Indeed, we would argue that we do not have the luxury to not do so, given that our research, which we have inserted into the public sphere, has already been appropriated to stake out positions in the debate with which many of us likely disagree. As anthropologists Henrik Vigh and David Sausdal point out, ‘the knowledge we … produce … enters into our world(s) in unintended and uncontrollable ways’,5 sometimes causing us, as Bruno Latour laments, ‘to be considered as friends by the wrong sort of allies’.6 Yet this uptake may be rendered (slightly) more intended and controllable by more clearly explaining how we envision our work to be understood and utilized. Thus far, critical conservation scholars have been principally concerned with criticizing and deconstructing the perspectives and actions of those we find objectionable on conceptual, ethical, as well as practical grounds. While this remains important, it is also crucial to now respond to this reception and uptake of our work and to more actively shape its future use.
CODA: WELCOME TO THE CONSERVATION REVOLUTION!
If the point of critical scholarship is, ultimately, to change the world in which we live, then we need to ensure that the change we promote is just: one that champions neither the commodification nor the militarization of conservation spaces.7 By more clearly understanding the central terms of debate and the different positions and disputes concerning them we can be clearer about our own positions vis-à-vis others. Our hope is that the analysis offered here has clarified where the conservation debate currently stands while pointing to productive avenues for moving it forward beyond the present standoff.8 Our proposal for convivial conservation is but one stream in a broader river of movements, struggles and ideas that seek to transcend the capitalist status quo. Convivial conservationists – whether social scientists, practitioners, rangers or otherwise – must therefore ally themselves with, learn from and contribute to these broader rivers of change. This is a massive challenge. It is, in fact, a revolutionary challenge; one already tackled by many people around the world. Through this book, we join them with hope.