Bram Büscher

Mongabay commentary by Robert Fletcher and me on the conservation implications of the re-election of Trump as president of the USA.

We wrote about the consequences of Trump becoming president the first time in our 2020 book The Conservation Revolution (Verso Books). There, we argued that, like the climate, biodiversity is very “likely to suffer under a Trump presidency” but that “this is not the only reason why his election is significant for conservation.” We argued that there is a much bigger challenge facing conservation, and we referred to this as the ‘Trump moment in conservation’:

“Basically, the Trump moment means that mainstream conservation refuses – at its own peril and that of the biodiversity it aims to conserve – to properly acknowledge the root causes of biodiversity loss and to support the radical types of responses necessary to halt and reverse this trend. Instead, […], many conservationists are content – often proudly or ‘pragmatically’ so – to join forces with the economic logics and institutions of destruction behind such terms as ‘natural capital’ or ‘ecosystem services.’ In doing so, they might occasionally slow down some biodiversity loss in some places. But at the very same time they strengthen the broader drivers of biodiversity destruction that completely undermine the small gains that might be made. This is the conservation equivalent of the ‘Trump moment,’ which can only be tackled by taking and supporting much more radical action.”

In the commentary, we urgently repeat our earlier plea: this second ‘Trump moment in conservation’ must be a wake-up call. Conservation must stop hiding behind its objective science, its pragmatic politics and its feel-good appeal to reorganize as a counter-hegemonic force in alliance with other movements around the world (climate justice, land back, Fridays for the Future and many more) that seek genuine system change.

We need a radical CONVIVIAL CONSERVATION movement, now more than ever. And we call upon the conservation sector to adopt, embrace and help build this.

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