Summary
This article recognises the political influence on conservation, which has occurred for many years. It identifies five key ways in which the practice of conservation is evolving. First, increasing the physical spaces being conserved, which satisfies the aspiration of many governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There are ambitions to officially protect 50% of the planet, but this does not consider the social or economic impacts. Second, ‘land sparing’ encourages farmers to optimize farmland instead of increasing it. Third, private ownership of conservation land is increasing, commodifying nature and non-human animals. In some instances, NGOs’ control land which they may or may not own. Fourth, connecting small and disconnected protected habitats with natural or semi-natural (i.e. green infrastructure) to make them more beneficial. Finally, demarcation of conservation spaces is moving from physical (i.e. fences or barriers) to digital with new technology. Green militarization is considered justified in order to protect the natural environment in conservation spaces. The author suggests that conservation often employs coercive methods, particularly in developing countries, relying on the dissemination of simplified narratives about human-wildlife conflict, while overlooking broader underlying issues.
There is a rich literature by geographers on the spatial imagination and ambition of conservation, and particularly the long-established strategy of creating protected areas such as national parks. This report highlights five ways in which the spatial ambitions, imaginations and practices of conservation are changing. First, appetite for the expansion of protected areas continues to grow, with proposals for marine reserves and up to half of the earth under protection. Second, substantial intensification of agriculture is proposed to free up land for such expansion, a policy of land sparing. Third, areas being protected are increasingly privately owned, and conservation is serving as a powerful form of legitimization of large-scale private landholding. Fourth, in many countries conservation management is being extended beyond formal protected areas in mosaics of public, private and community land. Fifth, the political and material technologies used to secure conservation territories, like the extension of these territories themselves, raise urgent political ecological questions. Conservation governance physically marks spaces for nature, but also constructs and polices ideas about both nature and society in profound ways, which often go unremarked by conservationists themselves.