Plotting the coloniality of conservation

Abstract

Contemporary and market-based conservation policies, constructed as rational, neutral and apolitical, are being pursued around the world in the aim of staving off multiple, unfolding and overlapping environmental crises. However, the substantial body of research that examines the dominance of neoliberal environmental policies has paid relatively little attention to how colonial legacies interact with these contemporary and market-based conservation policies enacted in the Global South. It is only recently that critical scholars have begun to demonstrate how colonial legacies interact with market-based conservation policies in ways that increase their risk of failure, deepen on-the-ground inequalities and cement global injustices. In this article, we take further this emerging body of work by showing how contemporary,market-based conservation initiatives extend the temporalities and geographies of colonialism, undergird long-standing hegemonies and perpetuate exploitative power relations in the governing of nature-society relations, particularly in the Global South. Reflecting on ethnographic insights from six different field sites across countries of the Global South, we argue that decolonization is an important and necessary step in confronting some of the major weaknesses of contemporary conservation and the wider socio-ecological crisis itself. We conclude by briefly outlining what decolonizing conservation might entail.

How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration

“…Western knowledge frameworks have a long history of dominating the discourse on conservation priority setting at the expense of other local non-Western value systems (sometimes referred to as conservation colonialism ; Collins et al. 2021 ). If restoration is implemented in an equity-centered manner, this can empower currently disadvantaged groups and can lessen power inequalities on both local and global scales.…”

Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU’s global environmental governance

“…Knowledge production, to start with, is globally dominated by white scholars (with the privilege of accessing research funds compared to the non-white population) and Eurocentric knowledge systems. This distorts the idea of what counts as ‘scientific’ knowledge, but also of the ways how science is produced and how resources and labour are accessed and achieved—all of which serve the continuity of North–South and racial domination in science, technology, and economy (Collins et al 2021 ; Trisos et al 2021 ). Thus, anything that lies outside the North’s horizon of knowledge systems and ways of knowing is primarily disregarded as non-scientific, ‘traditional’ and ‘local’, even when such knowledge has proven more effective in achieving better harmony between nature, society and humanity, as in the case of indigenous knowledge systems, for example, Dawson et al ( 2021 ).…”

Exploring Convivial Conservation in Theory and Practice

“…Highlighting the continued influence of colonial legacies in conservation (Mbaria and Ogada 2016;Collins et al 2021), Mabele et al (this issue) argue for the need to be 'epistemically disobedient' (Mignolo 2011: 54) and challenge the dominant modes of problem framings of western science and the values and epistemologies of large conservation organisations by drawing on alternative philosophies that align with local values and ways of knowing the world. They discuss how embedding conservation in southern Africa in Ubuntu philosophy could act as a powerful tool for grounding justice issues-and conservation more broadly-in traditional worldviews, values, and notions of justice.…”

“…However, aside from the initial proposition and theorisation by Büscher and Fletcher (2020) and engagement by some practitioners and scholars (DeVore et al 2019;Collins 2021;Collins et al 2021;Dunlap 2020;Krauss 2021;Toncheva and Fletcher 2021), convivial conservation remains nascent in its conceptualisation and practical development. As such, this special issue critically engages with the idea of convivial conservation and its potential to radically transform biodiversity conservation, guided by two questions: 1) What are the potentials and the pitfalls of convivial conservation as a transformative approach to conservation?…”