I wanted to comment on Büscher & Fletcher’s article titled ‘Towards Covivial Conservation’, which I found to be a thought piece for readers to re-imagine our outlook towards understanding nature and humans as a unit that co-exists together. Given the interconnectedness of conservation practices, non-profits, Green Banks, and international organisations have come together to radically approach the relationship of ‘humans’ and ‘nature’, seeking methods that align with the frameworks provided by the present capitalist economic systems. While this development appears optimistic, Büscher & Fletcher raise a critical question about the mainstream forms of conservation in contemporary society.
They explore how mainstream approaches to conservation by the above stakeholders claim to take a technocratic ‘middle-road’ rhetoric that claims to be politically neutral and subservient to the existing political framework, rooted in free-market capitalism. At the heart of the market, transaction between two parties relies on one’s interest in the outcome, and if the dominant party is not interested in the outcome, the other cannot obtain what they want without appeasing the interests of the dominant party (Jahan & Mahmud, 2023 for IMF). The rational self-interest theory guides this rhetoric, and with the growing political nature of right-wing authoritarianism and environmental rollback, the depoliticised stance of our politicians becomes morally wrong through this definition. This narrative shows how the present political economy has failed to imagine the conservation question, where societies follow rational self-interest with a lack of political stance of governing bodies advocating for socio-ecological conservation of the planet.
By compromising the interest of the environment, the failure of capitalism to voice the agency of our crying planet has inspired this piece to critically summarise the mainstream conservation. This approach has a distinct relationship with the capitalist system, shaping both its strategies and consequences.
Mainstream conservation is a capitalist approach, deeply rooted in the politics-nature relationship, which remains grounded in segregating space for people and nature through protected areas and wildlife parks that share unique boundaries. This model is an example of fortress conservation–one that sees the impact of a colonial style ideology upon local communities. This statement deeply resonates with the case example of Kaziranga National Park in Assam, where the protection of nature was entangled with the elite privilege of our colonial aristocrats.
The park originated as a colonial game reserve in 1905, established not as a sanctuary for species conservation/restoration but on the lines of pristine nature, untouched and beyond the reach of the common masses. Presently, it is recognised for its efforts to protect the endangered one-horned rhino. With the mission to conserve flagship species from the ills of the past, the conservation efforts align with state and market interests, such as promoting eco-tourism and national prestige. These efforts do not question the capitalist structures driving environmental degradation but instead operate within them, reinforcing state control and elite narratives. A paper by Saikia 2009 notes that eco-tourism is selling conservation-funded tourism (as mentioned by Büscher & Fletcher, 2019) through the pleasure of experiencing the wilderness, as a weekend getaway from the fast-paced life in concrete jungles.
Büscher & Fletcher talk about this dualism in the paper where conservation success is marketed to attract national and international tourists to grow a temporary sentiment towards nature, with little time to decipher the communities and minute organisms that form the ecosystem of the park. The park here excludes communities, nature, and the Rhino by commodifying its value to a mere bird trapped in a cage, where the exotic has to be caged to see its growth rate, accommodating capitalist logics to reductionist conservation.
Reductionist conservation here relied heavily on excluding local communities, tribal grazers, and traditional hunters who have historically shared the space with nature. With a focus on protecting the Rhino at all costs, scientific and institutional authority overlooks the social and historical injustices that have plagued the landscape since its inception as a game reserve in 1905. Communities that have long sustained themselves with forest resources are systematically removed and excluded, and the militarisation of the park, including shoot-on-sight orders for suspected poachers, disproportionately impacts local populations, casting them as criminals rather than stakeholders.
The capitalist conservation economy sees all humans as its enemy, where state-supported regulation allows for the material exploitation of Kaziranga and the Rhino, where wildlife becomes a spectacle for consumption. Büscher & Fletcher’s dualism of mainstream conservation highlights the violence and historical dispossessions of communities that aimed to suppress their colonial and exclusionary origins. If this position could equate human and non-human as elements that live in symbiosis, then the nature-human dichotomy would never exist, and these boundaries between segregating space would be replaced with mutual agreements of parties on both sides of the discussion.
The mainstream position embodies a distinct political stance on inclusion and exclusion, deeply tied to broader economic and colonial history, tying the position of conservation success in the present. The claims of this robust economic system are highly exclusionary, often relying on eviction, militarised enforcement, and centralised control, introducing power rooted in colonial legacies. If the inequalities of the past are not given agency in the present model of conservation, the fast-paced, output-yielding approach to conservation will capitalise on nature for economic benefits, and the vicious cycle of the rich and the poor will consume earth’s systems and the people who rely on it.
If a new model of conservation does emerge, its framework should reckon with the inclusion of communities, shared authority, mutual trust, and respect, which are lacking in the mainstream model presented above. What we need goes beyond creating a dialogue for radical change, but re-imagining who decides, who benefits, and what is worth protecting.
Sanvi Madan is an environmental enthusiast, with a keen interest in research pertaining to conservation, urban planning and geo-spatial analysis
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth