Connected Conservation: Rethinking conservation for a telecoupled world

Carmenta, Rachel; Barlow, Jos; Lima, Mairon G. Bastos; Berenguer, Erika; Choiruzzad, Shofwan; Carmona, Natalia Estrada; França, Filipe; Kallis, Giorgos; Killick, Evan; Lees, Alexander Charles; Martin, Adrian; Pascual, Unai; Pettorelli, Nathalie; Reed, J. Michael; Rodríguez, Iokiñe; Steward, Angela May; Sunderland, T.C.H.; Vira, Bhaskar; Zaehringer, Julie G.; Hicks, Christina C.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110047

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…By drawing on the plurality of values and holistic life-frames of living with, from, in and as nature, conservation action could embed and reflect ethics of responsibility, reciprocity and care and trend towards more just and inclusive futures Díaz, Settele, Brondízio, Ngo, Guèze, et al, 2019;IPBES, 2022;Kothari, 2021;Pascual et al, 2021;Zafra-Calvo et al, 2020). External interventions in tropical land-and seascapes therefore need to build on, strengthen, revitalize and empower those people-nature relationships that are plural and that tend to persist in those places so often the target of interventions (Carmenta et al, 2023). Such a focus would derail the further homogenization of diverse values, which we see in practice through intervention strategies (Adams et al, 2004;Otero et al, 2020) and biased impact metrics (McKinnon et al, 2016).…”

Section: Engage Plurality To Disarm Hegemonymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ultimate drivers of landscape transitions and environmental decline in the tropics are the demand for commodities in more affluent countries combined with the outsourcing of destructive components of production chains to areas with lower environmental regulations (Carmenta et al, 2023;Liu et al, 2013). Despite the dominance of distant drivers many interventions focus at the sitelevel in areas of high biological and cultural diversity (Carmenta et al, 2023). Interventions often seek climate, conservation or development goals aiming to mitigate climatic and ecological damages, restore past losses or deliver to human needs (Adams et al, 2004;Convention on Biological Diversity, 2022;Mansourian et al, 2017;Otero et al, 2020;Reed, Oldekop, et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Enhancing impact assessment is crucial because knowledge systems, values, and place-based relationships are marginalized and disappearing. Without recognizing these values, climate, conservation and development efforts may inadvertently contribute to this attrition (Carmenta et al, 2023). Moreover, interventions cannot support community recovery from environmental harms, including risk and disaster, without reflecting locally held values (Carmenta et al, forthcoming).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Climate, conservation, and development actors operate in landscapes where the plurality of values is strong and salient and therefore have the potential to support alternative visions of the future. They can do so by giving better recognition to plural values and thus increase the legitimacy of the plural values that link people, nature and well-being(Carmenta et al, 2023).Multidimensional well-being and the relational values within itshow great diversity, which manifests in various visions of future development and what constitutes appropriate environment development trade-offs. Some of these visions offer alternatives to the mainstream dogma and could be strengthened by making relational values explicit, visible and legitimate.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

Carmenta,

Zaehringer,

Balvanera

et al. 2023

People and Nature

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Globally, land and seascapes across the bioculturally diverse tropics are in transition. Impacted by the demands of distant consumers, the processes of global environmental change and numerous interventions seeking climate, conservation and development goals, these transitions have the potential to impact the relationships and plurality of values held between people and place. This paper is a Synthesis of seven empirical studies within the Special Feature (SF): ‘What is lost in transition? Capturing the impacts of conservation and development interventions on relational values and human wellbeing in the tropics’. Through two Open Forum workshops, and critical review, contributing authors explored emergent properties across the papers of the SF. Six core themes were identified and are subsumed within broad categories of: (i) the problem of reconciling scale and complexity, (ii) key challenges to be overcome for more plural understanding of social dimensions of landscape change and (iii) ways forward: the potential of an environmental justice framework, and a practical overview of methods available to do so. The Synthesis interprets disparate fields and complex academic work on relational values, human well‐being and de‐colonial approaches in impact appraisal. It offers a practical and actionable catalogue of methods for plural valuation in the field, and reflects on their combinations, strengths and weaknesses. The research contribution is policy relevant because it builds the case for why a more plural approach in intervention design and evaluation is essential for achieving more just and sustainable futures, and highlights some of the key actions points deemed necessary to achieve such a transition to conventional practice. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Section: Engage Plurality To Disarm Hegemonymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

Carmenta,

Zaehringer,

Balvanera

et al. 2023

People and Nature

Self Cite

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Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Williams,

Sandom,

Pettorelli

2024

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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Passive approaches to nature recovery have been hailed as a low‐cost approach to boosting biodiversity in ecologically degraded sites. But there remains little evidence of whether this generalises to all climatic and ecological contexts. To address this knowledge gap, we used satellite remote sensing to examine vegetation change in Alladale Wilderness Reserve, a remote rewilding site in Scotland where active and passive approaches have simultaneously taken place for the past decades. In contrast to enclosures and tree planting, more passive approaches did not help regenerate the native Caledonian forest, failing to lead to structural or functional change within Alladale, relative to the wider landscape. Observed changes under both approaches were moreover much less dramatic than those reported for the Knepp Estate, another established rewilding site in Southern England. Our results suggest that passive rewilding is unlikely to promote significant biodiversity change in areas where recent human forcing of ecological processes has been limited, even if past human pressures have intensively reshaped the ecosystem—as seen in Alladale. In such situations, active interventions are likely to be required to shift the system onto a new ecological trajectory. Altogether, our study illustrates how freely available satellite data can (1) help contrast the impacts of environmental management approaches on ecosystem structure and functioning, in ways that complement existing ground‐based studies; and (2) help distinguish areas likely to benefit from passive nature recovery approaches from those where specific active interventions are needed.

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Leverage points for tackling unsustainable global value chains: market-based measures versus transformative alternatives

Santika,

Nelson,

Flint

et al. 2023

Sustain Sci

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Tropical forests are rapidly disappearing due to the expansion of cash crops to meet demands from distant markets. Pressing concerns on deforestation impacts resulting from the global trade of tropical commodities have led some high-income countries’ governments to consider diverse regulatory and trade levers to tackle the problem. These include proposals for new supply chain due diligence legislation concerning imports of forest-risk products and the inclusion of environmental measures in trade deals. To contribute to this debate, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of existing data on global trade and consumption patterns of tropical commodities, attribution of commodity production to deforestation, trade agreements, and progress in the implementation of crop sustainability standards. We used global data on key tropical commodities of oil palm, cocoa, and coffee. Our study shows that high-income countries have the highest per capita consumption for the three commodities evaluated and that consumption rates have dramatically increased in the last two decades. We discuss a range of measures that can potentially be required to tackle deforestation in global supply chains, which are currently being considered by policymakers, before discussing the kinds of post-growth, convivial approaches that are often excluded by the framing. Given the inherent expansionary nature of global market dynamics, we show that market-based initiatives are inadequate to tackle continuing deforestation and socio-ecological degradation. More transformative solutions amplify commoning and post-growth approaches are required to lead to some uncoupling of trade and territorialising of economic activity to fit within planetary boundaries and allow for plural values.

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Connected Conservation: Rethinking conservation for a telecoupled world

Cited by 14 publications

References 90 publications

Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Leverage points for tackling unsustainable global value chains: market-based measures versus transformative alternatives

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