Protect and reconnect habitat, exclude poachers, and combat invasion by nonnative species. This is exactly what national parks and other protected areas are intended to do. There is no alternative. Parks and other strictly protected areas are the answer.
The conclusion therefore remains straightforward: ‘the global strategy must be to expand the number and size of protected areas, interconnect them, and rewild them.’69
Neoprotectionists are nothing but steadfast on this point. However, in this most recent campaign, they have upped the stakes dramatically. Many in their camp no longer believe that ‘the number and size of protected areas’ need simply be ‘expanded’; they now self-confidently – almost belligerently – assert that the protected area estate must be increased so dramatically as to encompass half the entire planet or more. Locke, for example, argues that ‘it is time for conservationists to reset the debate based on scientific findings and assert nature’s needs fearlessly.’ So far, he contends, it has been politics that has set conservation goals. This has resulted in ‘arbitrary percentages that rest on an unarticulated hope that such nonscientific goals are a good first step toward some undefined, better, future outcome’. Conservationists, Locke asserts, must now move beyond a ‘destructive form of self-censorship’ and promote targets based on ‘scientific assessment, review, and expert opinion’.70
Conservation biologist Reed Noss and colleagues, writing in an editorial in Conservation Biology state that, ‘In contrast to policy-driven targets, scientific studies and reviews suggest that some 25–75% of a typical region must be managed with conservation of nature as a primary objective to meet goals for conserving biodiversity’. Based on this, the authors recommend that:
When establishing global targets … it would be prudent to consider the range of evidence-based estimates of ‘how much is enough’ from many regions and set a target on the high side of the median as a buffer against uncertainty. From this precautionary perspective, 50 per cent – slightly above the mid-point of recent evidence-based estimates – is scientifically defensible as a global target.71
More explicit is Wilson, the revered biologist, in his book Half Earth. Stating bluntly that ‘humanity’ is ‘the problem’, he believes that ‘only by setting aside half the planet in reserve, or more, can we save the living part of the environment and achieve the stabilization required for our own survival’.72 Clearly, Wilson and other neoprotectionists are very worried about the fate of the planet, which they believe is doomed if we do not do something drastic as soon as possible. Setting aside at least half the earth for ‘self-willed’ nature, they argue, is the only solution commensurate with the scale of the problem. This radical, if not extreme, proposal has also been taken up by big non-governmental organizations such as Conservation International and many wilderness organizations united in the ‘Nature Needs Half’ campaign.73 Clearly, the human–nature dichotomy seems to become extremely rigid in this proposal, as aptly illustrated by the Nature Needs Half logo in figure 1.
Figure 1. Nature Needs Half logo.
Source: natureneedshalf.org.
While this radical new back-to-the-barriers position is increasingly supported by many neoprotectionists, this does not mean that they all think alike. Above and beyond the general acceptance of the importance of a dramatic increase in protected areas, there are many issues on which neoprotectionists diverge, sometimes sharply. But there is one other, somewhat surprising issue where it seems that more and more neoprotectionists are starting to converge, namely the issue of how to relate to the global political economy. Without necessarily referring to capitalism as such, many clearly feel uneasy about things like consumption and economic growth.74 Daniel Doak and colleagues, for example, criticize new conservation’s embrace of the green economy, simplistic ideas about partnering with business, and the notion that people are focused most on economic self-interest rather than intrinsic and moral goals.75 McCauley is even more explicit. He asserts that ‘market-based mechanisms for conservation are not, unfortunately, the panacea that they have been made out to be’ and proposes that ‘we must redirect much of the effort now being devoted to the commodification of nature back toward instilling in more people a love for nature.’76
More such examples abound, but dissenting voices are also present. Most prominently, Wilson has an almost evangelical faith in the power of the ‘free market’. Despite being critical of rising percapita consumption patterns, Wilson assuages these concerns by promoting a worryingly simplistic vision of ‘intensified economic evolution’. According to him, the ‘evolution of the free market, and the way it is increasingly shaped by high technology’, means that ‘products that win competition today … are those that cost less to manufacture and advertise, need less frequent repair and replacement, and give highest performance with a minimum amount of energy’. He further contends that ‘almost all of the competition in a free market, other than in military technology, raises the average quality of life’.77
We will come back to these simplistic and demonstrably false claims in chapters to follow, as they help to build the case for our own alternative proposal. For now, it is interesting to note that through this move, Wilson paradoxically ends up endorsing a similar proposal to some of the very Anthropocene conservationists he, in other respects, so opposes. Surprisingly, he even ends up advocating a vision of ‘decoupling economic activity from material and environmental throughputs’ in order to create sustainable livelihoods for a population herded into urban areas to free space for self-willed nature.78 This vision, while grounded in a quite different overarching conceptual perspective, is in many ways quite similar to that which the ecomodernist Breakthrough Institute has recently promoted in its own proposal for land sparing and decoupling to increase terrain for conservation.79
Yet Wilson seems quite iconoclastic in this respect. Many other neoprotectionists are increasingly veering towards a more critical stance on the embrace of capitalism-for-conservation and would want to reign this in, just like they want to reign in population growth, landuse change, and much else that has so far been quite central to the development of global capitalism. This is, clearly, a radical proposal in a context where global capitalism is still hegemonic – something acknowledged by several neoprotectionists. Yet whether it is tenable to be increasingly critical of capitalism while holding one of capitalism’s greatest vices – the human–nature dichotomy – central to one’s plan for the future is something that needs to be critically evaluated.
A FIRST ATTEMPT AT EVALUATING THE ANTHROPOCENE CONSERVATION DEBATE
Given all of this, how should we understand the current status of the great conservation debate, especially the latest, radical responses to the erstwhile dominance of mainstream conservation?80 There are several ways in which we could proceed, but in this chapter’s penultimate section we want to do two things: first, to discuss how different actors in the discussion and the conservation community more broadly have themselves evaluated the debate and how they view the main issues; second, to provide a brief evaluation of the conceptual logic and coherence of the main positions and issues under debate. The point of the latter aim is to provide the basis upon which in the next chapters we will, in more depth, assess whether these positions are tenable or not, theoretically as well as politically, and whether they could lead to just, effective and, equally importantly, realistic conservation proposals for the future.
First, how did different actors in these debates, and within the broader conservation community, understand and evaluate the latest iterations of the great conservation debate? Unsurprisingly, the two main protagonist