Bram Büscher

New blog post on the great new ‘undisciplined environments’ platform -check it out:

In the face of the sixth extinction, rising wildlife crime and biodiversity under dire threat around the globe, environmental conservation finds itself in desperate times. A new approach is needed, one that takes seriously our economic system’s structural pressures, violent socio-ecological realities, escalating extinctions and increasingly authoritarian politics. Convivial conservation is such an approach.

These days it is difficult to keep track of all the devastating conservation news appearing. While some profess ‘conservation optimism’, most of the scientific news about species, ecosystems and the climate is far from positive. The Living Planet Report 2018 states that 60% of all wild animals have disappeared since 1970. Other recent studies, including the major IPBES report launched in June 2019, show that extinction rates are accelerating and that global biodiversity thresholds may soon surpass ‘planetary boundaries’ beyond which even more dramatic decline is inevitable.

All of this is happening in a broader context wherein alt-right and authoritarian politicians like Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, Putin in Russia, Erdoğan in Turkey and many others promote an explicitly elitist, anti-environmentalist and divisive politics that could make things much worse for decades to come.

Continue to read here: http://undisciplinedenvironments.org/index.php/2019/10/01/the-case-for-convivial-conservation/