Holmes, G orcid.org/0000-0002-5393-5753, Sandbrook, C and Fisher, JA (2017) Understanding conservationists’ perspectives on the new conservation debate. Conservation Biology, 31 (2). pp. 353-363. ISSN 0888-8892
Abstract
A vibrant debate about the future direction of biodiversity conservation centers on the merits of the so-called new conservation. Proponents of the new conservation advocate a series of positions on key conservation ideas, such as the importance of human-dominated landscapes and conservation's engagement with capitalism. These have been fiercely contested in a debate dominated by a few high-profile individuals, and so far there has been no empirical exploration of existing perspectives on these issues among a wider community of conservationists. We used Q methodology to examine empirically perspectives on the new conservation held by attendees at the 2015 International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB). Although we identified a consensus on several key issues, 3 distinct positions emerged: in favor of conservation to benefit people but opposed to links with capitalism and corporations, in favor of biocentric approaches but with less emphasis on wilderness protection than prominent opponents of new conservation, and in favor of the published new conservation perspective but with less emphasis on increasing human well-being as a goal of conservation. Our results revealed differences between the debate on the new conservation in the literature and views held within a wider, but still limited, conservation community and demonstrated the existence of at least one viewpoint (in favor of conservation to benefit people but opposed to links with capitalism and corporations) that is almost absent from the published debate. We hope the fuller understanding we present of the variety of views that exist but have not yet been heard, will improve the quality and tone of debates on the subject.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | new conservation; Q methodology; values; nature; neoliberal conservation; markets; wilderness; human well-being |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Sep 2016 14:27 |
Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2018 17:05 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12811 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/cobi.12811 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:104216 |