From antagonistic conservation to biodiversity democracy in rewilding

Abstract

The importance of conservation is matched by its potential to provoke contention, especially for rewilding. Treating rural peoples as biodiversity “problems” has given way to viewing them as “solutions,” but most needed is a turn toward biodiversity democracy, resolving conservation conflicts and balancing rural-urban interests despite knowledge and value disagreements. The importance of conservation is matched by its potential to provoke contention, especially for rewilding. Treating rural peoples as biodiversity “problems” has given way to viewing them as “solutions,” but most needed is a turn toward biodiversity democracy, resolving conservation conflicts and balancing rural-urban interests despite knowledge and value disagreements. According to the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services global assessment report, some 1 million species may be threatened with extinction. Many of the drivers of global biodiversity loss, including alterations in land use and overexploitation, have only accelerated in the last 50 years. After failing to meeting the 2020 Aichi Targets, the Convention on Biological Diversity has been developing a set of goals and action-oriented targets for Post-2020.1Perino A. Pereira H.M. Felipe-Lucia M. Kim H. Kühl H.S. Marselle M.R. Meya J.N. Meyer C. Navarro L.M. van Klink R. et al.Biodiversity post-2020: Closing the gap between global targets and national-level implementation.Conservation Lett. 2021; : e12848https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12848Crossref Scopus (6) Google Scholar These ambitious goals aim not only to stabilize biodiversity loss by 2030 but also to allow for recovery of the area, connectivity, and integrity of natural ecosystems by 15% by 2050. To achieve these goals, a combination of including all land and sea under integrated spatial planning, effective implementation of protected areas for conserving wilderness areas and biodiversity in 30% of the planet, and placing 20% of degraded ecosystems under restoration have been set as targets. In order to achieve the goals, large-scale restoration will be required, and rewilding is one of the restoration approaches that has the potential for large-scale deployment.2Perino A. Pereira H.M. Navarro L.M. Fernandez N. Bullock J.M. Ceaușu S. Cortés-Avizanda A. van Klink R. Kuemmerle T. Lomba A. et al.Rewilding complex ecosystems.Science. 2019; 364: eaav5570https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5570Crossref PubMed Scopus (193) Google Scholar The concept of rewilding has evolved since the late 20th century. Earlier emphasis on large protected areas with connecting corridors for large carnivores has given way to focusing on complexity and on promoting ecological succession in a dynamic functional view of ecosystems.2Perino A. Pereira H.M. Navarro L.M. Fernandez N. Bullock J.M. Ceaușu S. Cortés-Avizanda A. van Klink R. Kuemmerle T. Lomba A. et al.Rewilding complex ecosystems.Science. 2019; 364: eaav5570https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5570Crossref PubMed Scopus (193) Google Scholar Rewilded habitats are defined by their resilience to recurring natural disturbances such as fire. Trophic relationships are multiplex and diverse. Species and their interactions “engineer” the environment. Rewilding practice encompasses many strategies, including agricultural land abandonment, allowing natural vegetation dynamics in urban parks, diversifying forests, non-management of ecological disturbances, species reintroductions, and restoring connectivity. But the goal is eventually realizing more self-regulating natural landscapes. Ecosystems are inexorably intertwined with human society. Wilder landscapes present both risks and benefits to people. The experience of wilderness can be culturally and psychologically valuable, and high-integrity ecosystems provide a number of services to human beings, including flood protection, pollination, and wildlife game. But ecological changes invariably come with the risk of social conflicts. People already live in most of the areas that could be targeted for rewilding, both inside and outside protected areas. Currently, over a quarter billion people live in protected areas, a number that may reach over 1 billion people in some protected area expansion scenarios.3Schleicher J. Zaehringer J.G. Fastré C. Vira B. Visconti P. Sandbrook C. Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people.Nature. 2019; 2: 1094-1096https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0423-yCrossref Scopus (62) Google Scholar These estimates do not include other rural areas that may be targeted for restoration, and over half of the world population lives in rural landscapes.4McDonald R.I. Mansur A.V. Ascensão F. Colbert M. Crossman K. Elmqvist T. Gonzalez A. Guneralp B. Haase D. Hamann M. et al.Research gaps in knowledge of the impact of urban growth on biodiversity.Nat. Sustainability. 2020; 3: 16-24https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0436-6Crossref Scopus (121) Google Scholar While some rewilding interventions pose only low or indirect risks (e.g., passive regeneration of native grassland can bring increased fire risk of shrub encroachment), approaches such as carnivore reintroduction or recolonization pose higher perceived and immediate risks to local livelihoods and can even provoke psychological distress among pastoralists.5Zahl-Thanem A. Burton R.J.F. Blekesaune A. Haugen M.S. Rønningen K. The impact of wolves on psychological distress among farmers in Norway.J. Rural Stud. 2020; 78: 1-11https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.05.010Crossref Scopus (10) Google Scholar Conservation’s relationship with these social risks and the role of rural peoples has evolved. Rural people were widely treated as a “problem” during much of the 20th century (Table 1). But this view has given way to presenting rural residents are biodiversity “solutions,” at least in theory. We argue that the social risks of rewilding will not be averted by idealizing either scientific or local knowledge. Rather, the solution is biodiversity democracy.Table 1An overview of competing frames for the relationship between the conservation movement, people, and scienceStakeholder engagementDominant periodDistribution of responsibilityOrientation toward knowledge/valuesRural people as the problembefore 2000local communities are responsible for the degradation of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversityscientists and conservationists (typically from urban backgrounds) prove how ecosystems should be managed to protect biodiversity and are source of correct environmental valuesurban citizens and scientists act to prevent rural extractive behaviorRural people as the solution2000–2020local communities are the best managers of landscapes and the guardians of biodiversityscientists should study ILK and incorporate it in their understanding of ecosystems and learn from traditional value systemsurban communities are the main drivers of biodiversity loss through their remote impactsBiodiversity democracyafter 2020both local communities and urban communities are key stakeholders and responsible actors for ecosystems and rural landscapesa diversity of values and preferences for nature across stakeholders needs to be incorporated in democratic decision making on rewildingscientific ecological knowledge and ILK are applied toward developing and implementing solutions Open table in a new tab Throughout the 20th century, environmental policy has increasingly “followed the science.” In the United States and elsewhere, environmental issues have been decreasingly settled through a democratic process, becoming administrative matter for experts and/or decided within the court system.6Dax M.J. Grizzly West: A Failed Attempt to Reintroduce Grizzly Bears in the Mountain West. University of Nebraska Press, 2015Crossref Google Scholar Traditionally, conservation scientists have been seen as having the privilege to “speak for” not only biodiversity but also which environmental values people should ostensibly have (Table 1). When conservationists have spoken for nature, agriculture and other traditional rural ways of life have usually been either absent or the target of critique. The spread of agriculture and indigenous hunting and gathering are often blamed for losses in biodiversity. For many years, biodiversity science presumed rather than demonstrated that non-native habitat areas were also “non-habitats.”7Vellend M. The Behavioral economics of biodiversity conservation scientists.Philos. Top. 2019; 47: 219-237https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics201947112Crossref Google Scholar Rural people were rendered as part of “the problem” by default. Interview data bear this out. In Katherine Cramer’s interviews with rural Wisconsinites, resentment of university researchers and environmental bureaucrats was motivated by the feeling that the latter only held contempt for rural people and their ways of life. Residents saw researchers as urban interlopers who refused to acknowledge the environmental knowledge that rural people did possess.8Cramer K. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. University of Chicago Press, 2016Crossref Google Scholar Conservation efforts have often floundered because of this resentment. For instance, the proposed introduction of grizzly bears to Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains was stymied by polarization and mistrust. The bear came to symbolize the declining “Old West,” built upon ranching, mining, and forestry, and the ascendance of a “New West”, defined by conservation and ecotourism. Rural residents saw reintroduction as a sort of invasion, an imposition of the vision of nature believed by urban, liberal newcomers. The “real” goal of grizzly advocates was seen as the extermination of Old West lifeways. One landowner put the matter bluntly: “I don’t think this is about grizzly bears. This is about power.” A compromise reintroduction plan languished amidst increasing gridlock before fading into irrelevancy.6Dax M.J. Grizzly West: A Failed Attempt to Reintroduce Grizzly Bears in the Mountain West. University of Nebraska Press, 2015Crossref Google Scholar This historical episode illustrates rewilding’s potential to provoke resentment. Even restoration cases that don’t involve species reintroduction are strikingly similar. Wetland restoration efforts on the former border between West and East Germany succumbed to local resistance. Farmers not only cited worries about possible damage to their fields but also felt compelled to “narrate their histories, their decades-long grievances,” viewing the effort as an attempt by conservationists to impose their anti-agricultural “ideology.”9Pieck S.K. Conserving novel ecosystems and layered landscapes along the inter-German border.Landscape Res. 2020; 45: 346-358https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2019.1623183Crossref Scopus (2) Google Scholar No doubt that this is but a short except of the history of rural exclusion, one that stretches back to removal of indigenous groups from national parks and arguably continues in the contemporary push for protected areas. Summarized as a conservation “ideal type,” it is where scientific knowledge is held as everywhere superior to local know-how. It frames rural peoples as biodiversity “problems” for pristine nature, which results in the interests of usually urban citizens being privileged over those who already live within biodiverse landscapes. Many biodiversity advocates now realize that making rural peoples into a “problem” often turns them into conservation enemies. Conservation science has evolved to recognize the biodiversity value of traditional or local ecological knowledge (ILK) ( Table 1). For instance, forest gardens tended by First Nations groups in the Pacific Northwest have higher species richness and functional diversity than the surrounding landscape, even 150 years after the end of management by indigenous communities.10Armstrong C.G. Miller J.E.D. Ritchie P.M. Lepofsky D. Historical indigenous land-use explains plant functional trait diversity.Ecol. Soc. 2021; 26: 6https://doi.org/10.5751/es-12322-260206Crossref Google Scholar And similar studies exist for traditional pastoral and forestry systems.11Ellis E.C. Gauthier N. Klein Goldewijk K. Bliege Bird R. Boivin N. Díaz S. Fuller D.Q. Gill J.L. Kaplan J.O. Kingston N. et al.People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years.P Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2021; 118e2023483118https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118Crossref Scopus (147) Google Scholar Biodiversity solutions do not necessarily require “pristine” nature. At some level, rewilding advocates have already recognized this. A study of political discourse in Scotland found that rewilders have been already distancing themselves from narrative that rewilding is about creating a world without people or unilaterally imposing animal reintroductions. The “new storyline” emphasizes that people are essential to rewilding and are beneficiaries of “nature-based economies.”12Martin A. Fischer A. McMorran R. Smith M. Taming rewilding – from the ecological to the social: How rewilding discourse in Scotland has come to include people.Land Use Policy. 2021; 111: 105677https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105677Crossref Scopus (7) Google Scholar But this recognition risks turning rural peoples into “the solution.” NGOs like the World Wildlife Federation now declare that indigenous people protect the majority of global biodiversity. Such statements omit complicated questions regarding which practices from which indigenous and local peoples are actually so protective. For instance, Polynesians may have driven to extinction up to half of the bird species in the Central Pacific between 4,000 and 1,000 years ago,13Pimm S.L. Moulton M.P. Justice L.J. Bird extinctions in the central Pacific.Philos. T R. Soc. B. 1994; 344: 27-33Crossref Google Scholar and the arrival of humans to many other regions of the world saw the extinction of several megafauna species at the end of the Pleistocene.14Barnosky A.D. Koch P.L. Feranec R.S. Wing S.L. Shabel A.B. Assessing the causes of Late Pleistocene extinctions on the continents.Science. 2004; 306 (5693): 70-75https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1101476Crossref PubMed Scopus (716) Google Scholar Centuries of deforestation through traditional grazing and fire degraded Mediterranean mountain landscapes, leading to corrective state afforestation programs in the late 19th century, often in confrontation with local communities.15Navarro L.M. Pereira H.M. Rewilding abandoned landscapes in Europe.Ecosystems. 2012; 15: 900-912https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-012-9558-7Crossref Scopus (416) Google Scholar While “modern” societies should bear much of the blame, the anthropological evidence nevertheless shows that indigenous and local practices are not always ecologically friendly. In addition, local knowledge and values are too often presented as only at risk of being impoverished by scientific reasoning rather than potentially enhanced. For all the talk of conservation plurality, learning between rural peoples and scientists is often depicted as a one-way street. One recent article rightfully critiques “pristine” nature but ends up concluding that effective biodiversity protection means simply “empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”11Ellis E.C. Gauthier N. Klein Goldewijk K. Bliege Bird R. Boivin N. Díaz S. Fuller D.Q. Gill J.L. Kaplan J.O. Kingston N. et al.People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years.P Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2021; 118e2023483118https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118Crossref Scopus (147) Google Scholar “Rural people as solution” as an ideal type is the polar opposite of “people as problem.” The denigration of rural knowledge and culture is replaced by its romanticization, and even by the Commodification of Poverty, as many nature protection schemes associated with maintaining traditional populations may hamper the capacity of those societies to adapt and deal with new economic and demographic changes.16Penna-Firme R. Brondízio E. The risks of commodifying poverty: rural communities, Quilombola identity, and nature conservation in Brazil.Habitus. 2007; 5: 355-373https://doi.org/10.18224/hab.v5.2.2007.355-373Crossref Google Scholar Urban scientists are no longer biodiversity saviors but rather tasked with empirically verifying traditional conservation wisdom and values. It is also a form of environmental “epistocracy,” wherein a subset of traditional knowledges and values dictate conservation action and development pathways. The debate between ILK and conservation science mirrors disputes within public administration and science and technology studies about the rightful role of expertise. And it is reflected today in contemporary political discourse, which is often divided between advocates of “follow the science” and populist pleas to respect the “common sense” of ordinary people. The dilemma persists because of the tendency to mistake political conflicts for knowledge problems, something that should not be repeated for rewilding. Both urbanites and rural peoples have legitimate interests at stake in conservation decisions, involving cultural, experiential, economic, and environmental values, even if urbanites live farther away. Resolving conservation conflicts doesn’t really require “indigenizing” science or the value systems of urbanites, and neither should rural people’s inclusion hinge on the robustness of their “traditional knowledge” or their adherence to certain ideas of nativeness. Instead, the answer lies in doing democracy, fairly negotiating the competing interests to find tentative solutions that work well enough for most stakeholders. One insightful case study involves biodiversity-enhancing agri-environmental schemes, such as flower planting and delayed mowing, among Dutch farmers. The previous institutional arrangement emphasized state control, with frequent and complicated audits to ensure individual compliance. Framing farmers as biodiversity problems fostered frustration and mistrust. The new model, which delegated some of the responsibility for administration and planning to farmers’ collectives, not only lowered transaction costs but sowed goodwill. 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