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Changing Perspectives in Conservation

By Claire Asher, on 18 December 2014

Our views of the importance of nature and our place within have changed dramatically over the the last century, and the prevailing paradigm has profound influences on conservation from the science that is conducted to the policies that are enacted. In a recent perspectives piece for Science, GEE’s Professor Georgina Mace considered the impacts that these perspectives have on conservation practise.

Before the late 1960s, conservation thinking was largely focussed on the idea that nature is best left to its own devices. This ‘nature for itself‘ framework centred around the value of wilderness and unaltered natural reserves. This viewpoint stemmed from ecological theory and research, however by the 1970s it became apparent that human activities were having severe and worsening impacts on species, and that this framework simply wasn’t enough. This led to a shift in focus towards the threats posed to species by human activities and how to reduce these impacts, a ‘nature despite people‘ approach to conservation. This is the paradigm of protected areas and quotas, designed to reduce threats posed and ensure long-term sustainability.

Changing views of nature and conservation, Mace (2014)

Changing views of nature and conservation, Mace (2014)

By the 1990s, people had begun to appreciate the many and varied roles that healthy ecosystems play in human-wellbeing; ecosystem services are crucial to providing clean water, air, food, minerals and raw materials that sustain human activities. Shifting towards a more holistic, whole-ecosystem viewpoint which attempted to place economic valuations on the services nature provides, conservation thinking entered a ‘nature for people‘ perspective. Within this framework, conservationists began to consider new metrics, such as the minimum viable population size of species and ecosystems, and became concerned with ensuring sustainable harvesting and exploitation. In the last few years, this view has again shifted slightly, this time to a ‘people and nature‘ perspective that values long-term harmonious and sustainable relationships between humans and nature, and which includes more abstract benefits to humans.

Changing conservation paradigms can have a major impact on how we design conservation interventions and what metrics we monitor to assess their success. Standard metrics of conservation, such as the IUCN classification systems, can be easily applied to both a ‘nature for itself’ and a ‘nature despite people’ framework. In contrast, a more economic approach to conservation requires valuations of ecosystems and the services they provide, which is far more complex to measure and calculate. Even more difficult is measuring the non-economic benefits to human well-being that are provided for by nature. The recent focus on these abstract benefits may make the success of conservation interventions more difficult to assess under this framework.

The scientific tools, theory and techniques available to conservation scientists have not always kept up with changing conservation ideologies, and differing perspectives can lead to friction between scientists and policy-makers alike. In the long-term a viewpoint that recognises all of these viewpoints may be the most effective in directing and appraising conservation management. Certainly, greater stability in the way in which we view our place in nature would afford science the opportunity to catch-up and develop effective and empirical metrics that can be meaningfully applied to conservation.

Original Article:

() Science

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