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

Description

Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates about the rise of the Anthropocene and the current 'sixth extinction' crisis demonstrate an urgent need and desire to move beyond mainstream approaches. Yet the conservation community is deeply divided over where to go from here. Some want to place 'half earth' into protected areas. Others want to move away from parks to focus on unexpected and 'new' natures. Many believe conservation requires full integration into capitalist production processes. Building on a razor-sharp critique of current conservation proposals and their contradictions, Buscher and Fletcher argue that the Anthropocene challenge demands something bigger, better and bolder. Something truly revolutionary. They propose convivial conservation as the way forward. This approach goes beyond protected areas and faith in markets to incorporate the needs of humans and nonhumans within integrated and just landscapes. Theoretically astute and practically relevant, The Conservation Revolution offers a manifesto for conservation in the 21st century - a clarion call that cannot be ignored.

Bram Buscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and holds visiting positions at the University of Johannesburg and Stellenbosch University. Bram has published over 75 articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and is the author of 'Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa' (Duke University Press, 2013). Bram is one of the senior editors of the open-access journal Conservation & Society (www.conservationandsociety.org). Robert Fletcher is Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His research interests include conservation, development, tourism, climate change, globalization and resistance and social movements. He is the author of Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism (Duke University Press, 2014) and co-editor of NatureTM Inc.: Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age (U of Arizona Press, 2014) and Lessons from the Ecolaboratory: Negotiating Environment and Development in Costa Rica (U of Arizona Press, forthcoming), having also written more than sixty academic articles and book chapters. He is co-Editor-in-Chief of Geoforum and Associate Editor of Conservation & Society.

Praise for Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa: Bram Buscher's Transforming the Frontier is a masterful piece of scholarship that should find a hallowed place on our bookshelves. -- Larry A. Swatuk * Review of Policy Research * Praise for Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa: Transforming the Frontier is a brilliant and original achievement and a highly readable one at that. As I read, I became increasingly awed by the magnitude of Buscher's feat, in terms of both the expansiveness of ethnographic field work and the complexity and nuance of his theoreti- cal interpretation. I fear that this review might fall short of doing full justice to Buscher's accomplishment. -- Roderick P. Neumann * The AAG Review of Books * Praise for Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa: Bram Buscher offers an original approach to conceptualizing and examining neoliberal modes of government in action. It uses a richly grounded empirical analysis to shed light on a key puzzle with important political stakes: How are implausible win-win scenarios sustained despite their manifold contradictions, and what kinds of critical work are needed to puncture them? An excellent read. -- Tania Murray Li, author of The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics Praise for Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa: Making a major contribution to political ecology, conservation studies, and the critical analysis of neoliberalization, Transforming the Frontier will appeal to a wide readership of anthropologists, sociologists, Africanists, historians, geographers, and those in development and environmental studies. Bram Buscher sheds new light on our understanding of environmental conservation and economic development projects by providing a truly brilliant critique of the intersection of conservation development and neoliberalization in southern Africa. -- Paige West, author of From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea Praise for Nature Inc.: Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age "The contributors to this book are some of the leading lights in this new area of cross-disciplinary study. The book's analysis of neoliberal conservation has important implications for environmental policy globally. The book will certainly be widely read across disciplines ranging from geography to anthropology to science and development studies." -- Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and co-author of Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "Fletcher forensically analyses what it is about getting active in the great outdoors that chimes with the culture of its majority attendees - white middle class westerners." * Wanderlust * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "Robert Fletcher, an accomplished white-water tour guide, ecotourist, and cultural anthropologist, emerges in this text as one of the rare few whopossesses the skill set needed to gain ethnographic entree into this elusive, fast-moving subculture." -- Sally Ann Ness * Current Anthropology * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "Although the main topic in this substantially researched title is why people engage in ecotourism, the practical implications of this study are important. . . . The book has serious implications for those who would promote ecotourism as a primary means of saving endangered landscapes, saying it may not be the panacea we had hoped. VERDICT Recommended for academic libraries." * Library Journal * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "Fletcher offers readers a serious review of ecotourism and its evolution over the past several decades.. Altogether, there are few aspects of the human condition as it interacts with nature that the author does not touch on, from politics to psychology to sexuality and literature (Was Don Quixote the original ecotourist?). Any reader looking for a deep understanding of ecotourism should start here." * Booklist * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "An intelligent and important commentary on contemporary society, exploiting ecotourism as a window into global processes." -- Jack David Eller * Anthropology Review Database * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "This book makes an important contribution to tourism studies. Further, by situating the ecotourist as the quintessential postmodern subject, Fletcher offers an analysis that will be of interest to a much broader audience, linking contemporary work to leisure and contemporary production to consumption." -- Laurie Kroshus Medina * American Ethnologist * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "In Romancing the Wild, Fletcher ... generally describes the contemporary ecotourist scouring the globe for the next adventure. Because anthropology is famous for getting at the humanity behind the data, works such as Romancing the Wild are particularly important." -- Frank Hutchins * American Anthropologist * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "[A] comprehensive and well-written discussion of the ways in which adventure seeking activities like whitewater kayaking, mountaineering, and so on, can be used to think about how and why certain kinds of dominant cultural values, norms, and discourses - such as individual autonomy, self-actualization, continual progress, and class privilege - are formulated, communicated, and experienced in identity-shaping ways." -- Luis Vivanco * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute * Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "In Romancing the Wild, Robert Fletcher examines the cultural processes embedded in, and brought to light by, ecotourism practices. Through vivid ethnography and careful conceptual framing, he shows ecotourism to be an organized system of ideas, practices, and values that produces places and peoples, and structures the interface between the natural and the cultural. Fletcher reads ecotourism through critical political economy, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis and unpacks it as work, leisure, production, and consumption. With this, he gives the reader a truly anthropological view of one of the most enduring artifacts of modernity." -- Paige West, author of From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea Praise for Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism "Thorough and sophisticated, Romancing the Wild is likely to become the key scholarly reference in contemporary studies of ecotourism. Its scope and depth mean it is a very useful resource for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and geographers alike. It has even broader theoretical significance as a fascinating sociocultural analysis of contemporary ecotourism as a phenomenon of late-industrial society." -- Rosaleen Duffy, author of Nature Crime: How We're Getting Conservation Wrong This book is a remarkable intellectual and political achievement, demonstrating nothing less than how to organize and practice revolutionary conservation beyond the Anthropocene, but within the ruins of uneven socio-ecological capitalist development. A razor-sharp analysis of conservation and how to politicize its futures. -- Erik Swyngedouw, University of Manchester 'In our era of unprecedented conservation needs and challenges, this hard-hitting, clear-sighted book offers a radical and timely way forward. Two eminent and committed political ecologists cut a path through old and new conservation debates and dichotomies - people vs. nature, capitalism vs. post-capitalism - to offer a new paradigm and politics around conviviality. Vital reading, and a vital manifesto for all concerned with how people and non-human natures can live well together' -- Professor Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex Buscher and Fletcher significantly advance radical alternatives to mainstream conservation, especially by locating them within the need for systemic alternatives to capitalism (and hopefully by implication, though not explicitly stated, patriarchy). Their notion of convivial conservation, building on innovative traditions that have broken away from dominant notions of progress and development, helps envisage an end to the human domination of the earth, so desperately needed. -- Ashish Kothari, co-author with A. Shrivastava of Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India (2012) An essential foundation for reconsidering the status quo. -- Amelia Rina * BOMB * Both rigorous and accessible...an important addition to revolutionary thought in political ecology. -- Jordan Teicher * Uneven Earth * Both a theoretical and practical guide for anyone looking to reevaluate their relationship with capitalism-and the future of life on earth. ... As the world experiences the catastrophic effects of political and economic systems that prioritize profits over people, The Conservation Revolution provides an essential foundation for reconsidering the status quo and prompts us to move toward a more equitable, sustainable future. -- Amelia Rina * BOMB Magazine * The Conservation Revolution was, for me, a refreshing read in bleak times. It struck the right balance between realism and hopeful optimism by putting forward ideas for conserving nature that do not simply imagine ways of being outside of capitalism, but that recognize the need to remedy capitalist conservation's cumulative negative effects -- Y. Ariadne Collins * Antipode *