Abstract
Social scientists of conservation typically address sources of legitimacy of conservation policies in relation to local communities’ or indigenous land rights, highlighting social inequality and environmental injustice. This chapter reflects on the underlying ethics of environmental justice in order to differentiate between various motivations of conservation and its critique. Conservation is discussed against the backdrop of two main ethical standpoints: preservation of natural resources for human use and protection of nature for its own sake. These motivations will be examined highlighting mainstream conservation and alternative deep ecology environmentalism. Based on this examination, this chapter untangles concerns with social and ecological justice in order to determine how environmental and human values overlap, conflict, and where the opportunity for reconciliation lies, building bridges between supporters of social justice and conservation.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, W. A., & Hutton, J. (2007). People, parks and poverty: Political ecology and biodiversity conservation. Conservation and Society, 5, 147–183.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology state of mind (pp. 494–499). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baxter, B. (2005). A theory of ecological justice. New York: Routledge.
Bekoff, M. (Ed.). (2013). Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Best, S., & Nocella, A. J. (2011). The animal liberation front: A political and philosophical analysis. New York: Lantern Books.
Bisgould, L. (2008). Power and irony: One tortured cat and many twisted angles to our moral schizophrenia about animals. Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World, 8, 259.
Bonnett, M. (2013). Sustainable development, environmental education, and the significance of being in place. Curriculum Journal, 24(2), pp. 250–271.
Bonnett, M. (2015). Sustainability, the metaphysics of mastery and transcendent nature. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Sustainability: Key issues. New York: Routledge Earthscan.
Borràs, S. (2016). New transitions from human rights to the environment to the rights of nature. Transnational Environmental Law, 5, 113–143.
Brechin, S. R., Wilshusen, P. R., Fortwrangler, C. L., & West, P. C. (Eds.). (2003). Contested nature: Promoting international biodiversity conservation with social justice in the twenty-first century. New York: State University of New York Press.
Brockington, D. (2002). Fortress conservation. The preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve (African issues series). Oxford: James Currey.
Brockington, D., Duffy, R., & Igoe, J. (2008). Nature unbound. In Conservation, capitalism and the future of protected areas. London: Earthscan.
Brosius, P. (1999). Green dots, pink hearts: Displacing politics from the Malaysian rain forest. American Anthropologist, 101(1), 36–57.
Brosius, P., Tsing, A., & Zerner, C. (Eds.). (2005). Communities and conservation: Histories and politics of community-based natural resource management. New York: Altamira.
Büscher, B. (2015). “Rhino poaching is out of control!” Violence, heroes and the politics of Hysteria in online conservation. Paper presented at the British International Studies Association. 16–19 June, London.
Cafaro, P. (2015). Three ways to think about the sixth mass extinction. Biological Conservation, 192, 387–393.
Cafaro, P., & Primack, R. (2014). Species extinction is a great moral wrong. Biological Conservation, 170, 1–2.
Campbell, M. (2012). Why the silence on population? In P. Cafaro & E. Crist (Eds.), Life on the brink: Environmentalists confront overpopulation (pp. 41–56). Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
Caplan, P. (Ed.). (2004). The ethics of anthropology: Debates and dilemmas. New York: Routledge.
Catton, W. R., & Dunlap, R. E. (1978). Environmental sociology: A new paradigm. American Sociologist, 13, 41–49.
Chapin, M. (2004). A challenge to conservationists. World Watch, 17(6), 17–31.
Chaudhuri, T. (2012). Learning to protect: Environmental education in a South Indian tiger reserve. In Helen Kopnina (Ed.), Anthropology of environmental education (pp. 87–113). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Crist, E. (2012). Abundant earth and population. In P. Cafaro & E. Crist (Eds.), Life on the brink: Environmentalists confront overpopulation (pp. 141–153). Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Crist, E. (2013). Ecocide and the extinction of animal minds. In M. Bekoff (Ed.), Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation (pp. 45–53). London: Chicago University Press.
Crist, E., & Cafaro, P. (2012). Human population growth as if the rest of life mattered. In P. Cafaro & E. Crist (Eds.), Life on the brink: Environmentalists confront overpopulation (pp. 3–15). Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Crist, E., & Kopnina, H. (2014). Unsettling anthropocentrism. Dialectical Anthropology, 38, 387–396.
Desmond, J. (2013). Requiem for roadkill: Death and denial on America’s roads. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Environmental anthropology: Future directions (pp. 46–58). New York/Oxford: Routledge.
Dietz, T., Fitzgerald, A., & Shwom, R. (2005). Environmental values. Annual Review Environmental Resources, 30, 335–372.
Doak, D. F., Bakker, V. J., Goldstein, B. E., & Hale, B. (2015). What is the future of conservation? In G. Wuerthner, E. Crist, & T. Butler (Eds.), Protecting the wild: Parks and wilderness, the foundation for conservation (pp. 27–35). Washington, DC/London: The Island Press.
Dunlap, R. E., & York, R. (2008). The globalization of environmental concern and the limits of the postmaterialist values explanation: Evidence from four multinational surveys. The Sociological Quarterly, 49, 529–563.
Eckersley, R. (1998). Divining evolution and respecting evolution. In A. Light (Ed.), Social ecology after Bookchin. London: The Guilford Press.
Ehrenfeld, D. (1988). Why put a value on biodiversity? In E. O. Wilson (Ed.), Biodiversity. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Einarsson, N. (1993). All animals are equal but some are cetaceans: Conservation and culture conflict. In K. Milton (Ed.), Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 73–84). New York: Routledge.
Escobar, A. (1996). Constructing nature: Elements for a post-structuralist political ecology. In R. Peet & M. Watts (Eds.), Liberation ecologies (pp. 46–68). London: Routledge.
Faber, D., & McCarthy, D. (2003). Neo-liberalism, globalization and the struggle for ecological democracy: Linking sustainability and environmental justice. In J. Agyeman & R. D. Bullard (Eds.), Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world (pp. 38–63). New York: Routledge.
Fletcher, R., Breitlin, J., & Puleo, V. (2014). Barbarian hordes: The overpopulation scapegoat in international development discourse. Third World Quarterly, 35(7), 1195–1215.
Fredericks, S. E. (2015). Ethics in sustainability indexes. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Sustainability: Key issues (pp. 73–87). New York: Routledge.
Gleeson, B., & Low, N. (1998). Justice, society and nature: An exploration of political ecology. London: Routledge.
Goldberg, J. (2010). The hunted: Did American conservationists go too far in Africa? The New Yorker, April 5.
Gould, K. A., & Lewis, T. L. (2012). The environmental injustice of green gentrification. In The world in Brooklyn: Gentrification, immigration, and ethnic politics in a global city (pp. 113–146). Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Gould, K. A., Pellow, D. N., & Schnaiberg, A. (2015). Treadmill of production: Injustice and unsustainability in the global economy. New York: Routledge.
Greenpeace. (2013). Eliminate toxic chemicals. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/toxics/.
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Haring, B. (2011). Plastic pandas. The Netherlands: Nijgh & Van Ditmar.
Harrison, J. L. (2014). Neoliberal environmental justice: Mainstream ideas of justice in political conflict over agricultural pesticides in the United States. Environmental Politics, 23(4), 650–669.
Hawkins, R. (2012). Perceiving overpopulation: Cannot we see what we’re doing? In P. Cafaro & E. Crist (Eds.), Life on the brink: Environmentalists confront overpopulation (pp. 202–213). Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
Henley, D. (2011). Swidden farming as an agent of environmental change: Ecological myth and historical reality in Indonesia. Environment and History, 17, 525–554.
Higgins, P. (2010). Eradicating ecocide: Laws and governance to prevent the destruction of our planet (pp. 62–63). London: Shepheard Walwyn Publishers Ltd.
Horowitz, L. S. (2012). Translation alignment: Actor-network theory and the power dynamics of environmental protest alliances in New Caledonia. Antipode, 44(3), 806–827.
Hovik, S., Sandström, C., & Zachrisson, A. (2010). Management of protected areas in Norway and Sweden: Challenges in combining central governance and local participation. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 12(2), 159–177.
Igoe, J. (2011). Forum. Rereading conservation critique: A response to Redford. Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 45(3), 333–334.
Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2007). Neoliberal conservation: A brief introduction. Conservation and Society, 5(4), 432–449.
Ingold, T. (2006). Against human nature: Evolutionary epistemology. Language and Culture, 39(3), 259–281.
Kalland, Arne. 2009. Unveiling the whale: Discourses on whales and whaling (Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology series). New York: Berghahn Books.
Kareiva, P., Lalasz, R., & Marvier, M. (2011). Conservation in the anthropocene: Beyond solitude and fragility. Breakthrough Journal. Fall, 29–27.
Katz, E. (1999). Envisioning a de-Anthropocentrised world: Critical comments on Anthony Weston’s ‘the incomplete eco-philosopher’. Ethics, Policy and Environment, 14, 97–101.
Kelch, T. G. (2016). Towards universal principles for global animal advocacy. Transnational Environmental Law, 5, 81–111.
Kemf, E. (Ed.). (1993). The law of the mother: Protecting indigenous peoples in protected areas. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Koot, S. (2016). Cultural ecotourism as an indigenous modernity: Namibian bushmen and two contradictions of capitalism. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Handbook of environmental anthropology (pp. 315–326). New York: Routledge.
Kopnina, H. (2012a). Towards conservational anthropology: Addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology. Dialectical Anthropology, 36(1), 127–146.
Kopnina, H. (2012b). Re-examining culture/conservation conflict: The view of anthropology of conservation through the lens of environmental ethics. Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences, 9(1), 9–25.
Kopnina, H. (2012c). Anthropology of environmental education. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Kopnina, H. (2014a). Environmental justice and biospheric egalitarianism: Reflecting on a normative-philosophical view of human-nature relationship. Earth Perspectives, 1, 8.
Kopnina, H. (2014b). Future scenarios and environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 45(4), 217–231.
Kopnina, H. (2016a). Half the earth for people (or more)? Addressing ethical questions in conservation. Biological Conservation, 203(2016), 176–185.
Kopnina, H. (2016b). Animal cards, supermarket stunts and world wide fund for nature: Exploring the educational value of a business-ENGO partnership for sustainable consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 16(3), 926–994.
Kopnina, H. (2016c). Nobody likes dichotomies (but sometimes you need them). Anthropological forum. Special forum: Environmental and social justice? The Ethics of the Anthropological Gaze, 26(4), 415–429.
Kopnina, H., & Shoreman-Ouimet, E. (eds) (2011) Environmental anthropology today. Routledge, New York/Oxford.
Kopnina, H., & Gjerris, M. (2015). Are some animals more equal than others? Animal rights and deep ecology in environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 20, 109–123.
Kothari, A., Camill, P., & Brown, J. (2013). Conservation as if people also mattered: Policy and practice of community-based conservation. Conservation and Society, 11, 1–15.
Kottak, C. P. (1999). The new ecological anthropology. American Anthropologist, 101(1), 23–35.
Kymlicka, W., & Donaldson, S. (2014). Animal rights and aboriginal rights. In V. Black (Ed.), Animal law in Canada. Irwin: Toronto.
Lawrence, K. S., & Abrutyn, S. B. (2015). The degradation of nature and the growth of environmental concern: Toward a theory of the capture and limits of ecological value. Human Ecology Review, 21(1), 87.
Leopold, A. (1949/1987). A sand county almanac and sketches here and there. New York: Oxford University Press.
Liddick, D. R. (2006). Eco-terrorism: Radical environmental and animal liberation movements. Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.
Lyman, M. W., Danks, C., & Maureen, M. D. (2013). New England’s community forests: Comparing a regional model to ICCAs. Conservation and Society, 11, 46–59.
Martin, A., Akol, A., & Gross-Camp, N. (2015). Towards an explicit justice framing of the social impacts of conservation. Conservation and Society, 13, 166–178.
Marvier, M. (2014). A call for ecumenical conservation. Animal Conservation, 17(6), 518–519.
Mathews, F. (2016). From biodiversity-based conservation to an ethic of bio-proportionality. Biological Conservation, 200, 140–148.
McCauley, D. (2006). Selling out on nature. Nature, 443, 27–28.
McElroy, A. (2013). Sedna’s children: Inuit elders’ perceptions of climate change and food security. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Environmental anthropology: Future directions (pp. 145–171). New York/Oxford: Routledge.
Merchant, C. (1992). Radical ecology: The search for a liveable world. New York: Routledge.
Milfont, T., & Schultz, P. W. (2016). Culture and the natural environment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 194–199.
Miller, B., Soulé, M. E., & Terborgh, J. (2014). ‘New conservation’ or surrender to development? Animal Conservation, 17(6), 509–515.
Milton, K. (1993). Introduction. In K. Milton (Ed.), Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 73–84). New York: Routledge.
Milton, K. (1996). Environmentalism and cultural theory: Exploring the role of anthropology in environmental discourse. New York: Routledge.
Milton, K. (2002). Loving nature: Toward an ecology of emotion. New York: Routledge.
Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. London/New York: Verso Books.
Naess, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep: Long-range ecology movement. A summary. Inquiry, 16, 95–99.
Noss, R. F. (1992). The wildlands project land conservation strategy. Wild Earth, 1, 9–25.
Nuttall, M. (2016). Climate, environment, and society in Northwest Greenland. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Handbook of environmental anthropology (pp. 219–229). New York: Routledge.
Paterson, B. (2006). Ethics for wildlife conservation: Overcoming the human–nature dualism. Bioscience, 56(2), 144–150.
Peters, A. (2016). Global animal law: What it is and why we need it. Transnational Environmental Law, 5, 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102516000066.
Pluhar, E. B. (1995). Beyond prejudice: The moral significance of human and nonhuman animals. Durham: Duke University Press.
Pountney, J. (2012). Book review: Kalland, unveiling the whale. Durham Anthropology Journal, 18(1), 215–217.
Rantala, S., Vihemäki, H., Swallow, B. M., & Jambiya, G. (2013). Who gains and who loses from compensated displacement from protected areas? The case of Derema corridor, Tanzania. Conservation and Society, 11(2), 97–111.
Redford, K. H. (2011). Forum. Misreading the conservation landscape. Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 45(3), 324–330.
Redford, K. H., & Adams, W. M. (2009). Payment for ecosystem services and the challenge of saving nature. Conservation Biology, 23, 785–787.
Redford, K.H., & Fearn, E. (Eds.). (2007). Protected areas and human displacement: A conservation perspective. Wildlife Conservation Society (Working Paper No 29).
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461, 472–475.
Rudy, K. (2012). If we could talk to the animals: On changing the (Post) human subject. In M DeMello (Ed.), Speaking for animals: Animal autobiographical writing. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Sandall, R. (2000). The culture cult: Designer tribalism and other essays. Boulder: Westview Press.
Scarce, R. (2011). If a tree falls: A story of the earth liberation front interview: Rik scarce, author of ‘Eco-Warriors’. http://www.pbs.org/pov/ifatreefalls/eco-warriors-rik-scarce-interview.php.
Schlosberg, D. (2007). Defining environmental justice: Theories, movements, and nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (2012). How to think seriously about the planet: The case for an environmental conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shoreman-Ouimet, E., & Kopnina, H. (2015). Reconciling social and ecological justice for the sake of conservation. Biological Conservation, 184, 320–326.
Shoreman-Ouimet, E., & Kopnina, H. (2016). Conservation and culture: Beyond anthropocentrism. New York: Routledge Earthscan.
Singer, P. (1977). Animal liberation: A new ethics for our treatment of animals. New York: Random House.
Smail, K. (2003). Remembering Malthus III: Implementing a global population reduction. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 123(2), 295–300.
Sodikoff, G. (Ed.). (2011). The anthropology of extinction: Essays on culture and species death. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Strang, V. (2013). Notes for plenary debate – ASA-IUAES conference, Manchester, 5–10th Aug 2013. Motion: ‘Justice for people must come before justice for the environment’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldnYTYMx-k.
Sullivan, S. (2006). The elephant in the room? Problematizing ‘new’ (neoliberal) biodiversity conservation. Forum for Development Studies, 33(1), 105–135.
Sunstein, C. R., & Nussbaum, M. C. (2004). Animal rights: Current debates and new directions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sykes, K. (2016). Globalization and the animal turn: How international trade law contributes to global norms of animal protection. Transnational Environmental Law, 5, 55–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102516000054.
Taylor, B. R. (2008). The tributaries of radical environmentalism. Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2(1), 61.
Temudo, M. P. (2012). “The white men bought the forests”: Conservation and contestation in Guinea-Bissau, western Africa. Conservation and Society, 10, 354–366.
Van Huijstee, M., & Glasbergen, P. (2010). Business–NGO interactions in a multi-stakeholder context. Business and Society Review, 115(3), 249–284.
Van Huijstee, M., Pollock, L., Glasbergen, P., & Leroy, P. (2011). Challenges for NGOs partnering with corporations: WWF Netherlands and the environmental defense fund. Environmental Values, 20, 43–74.
Wakild, E. (2015). Parks, people, and perspectives: Historicizing conservation in Latin America. In G. Wuerthner, E. Crist, & T. Butler (Eds.), Protecting the wild: Parks and wilderness, the foundation for conservation (pp. 41–53). Washington, DC/London: The Island Press.
Washington, H. (2015). Is ‘sustainability’ the same as ‘sustainable development’? In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Sustainability: Key issues (pp. 359–377). New York: Routledge.
Wenzel, G. W. (2009). Canadian Inuit subsistence and ecological instability – If the climate changes, must the Inuit? Polar Research, 28(1), 89–99.
West, P. (2008). Translation, value, and space: Theorizing an ethnographic and engaged environmental. American Anthropologist, 4, 632–642.
West, P., & Brockington, D. (2011). Introduction: Capitalism and the environment. Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 3(1), 1–3(3).
West, P., Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2006). Parks and people: The social impact of protected areas. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35, 251–277.
Wijkman, A., & Rockström, J. (2012). Bankrupting nature: Denying our planetary boundaries. New York: Routledge.
Wilshusen, P. R., Brechin, S. R., Fortwrangler, C. L., & West, P. C. (2002). Reinventing a square wheel: Critique of a resurgent “protection paradigm” in international biodiversity conservation. Society and Natural Resources, 15, 17–40.
Wissenburg, M. (1993). The idea of nature and the nature of distributive justice. In A. Dobson & P. Lucardie (Eds.), The politics of nature: Explorations in green political theory. London: Routledge.
Wuerthner, G. (2012). Population, fossil fuels and agriculture. In P. Cafaro & E. Crist (Eds.), Life on the brink: Environmentalists confront overpopulation (pp. 123–129). Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kopnina, H. (2018). Just Conservation. In: Marques, J. (eds) Handbook of Engaged Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53121-2_5-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53121-2_5-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53121-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53121-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences