Tag Archives: protected areas

A call for constructive dialogue on the future of area-based conservation

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Back in 2018, just before the 14th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), I wrote an article on this blog about a big argument regarding the future of protected areas. Should there be a 50% ‘half earth’ target for area-based conservation? Or should there be a shift towards a more integrated ‘whole earth’ perspective? Or something else? 

Fast forward three years, and we are still waiting to see whether the 15th CBD Conference of the Parties, postponed from 2020 due to COVID, will happen this year (the current plan is for October 2021 in Kunming, China, but that is looking increasingly unlikely). While a lot has changed in this period, the future of area-based conservation remains the hot topic in the ongoing CBD process. Key players have set out various contrasting positions in press releases and on twitter, and an avalanche of papers that seek to influence the process have been published – including a proposed Global Deal for Nature, a call for an approach based on ‘three conditions’ of global land use, a calculation of roughly how many people live in areas that might be protected under a half earth goal, and many more. 

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A tale of HE, SHE, WE, and me

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A big debate is going on at the moment about the future of conservation – much of it centred on the suggestion by Edward Wilson and others that half the world should be allocated to protected areas. Wilson calls this “Half Earth” (HE), and his book of the same name calls for 50% coverage of ‘inviolable natural reserves’. Others have set out various counter-proposals, including “Whole Earth” (WE) and “Sustainable Half Earth” (SHE). I have played a small part in this debate over the last few months, which has given me the chance to observe at close quarters the strange process by which simple and catchy ideas can take hold, even when most people don’t agree with them. In this article I try to tell this curious tale of HE, SHE, WE and me.

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Separate yet connected: the spatial paradox of conservation

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Contemporary conservation practice includes two important strategies: trying to separate people and nature in space (in order to protect nature), and trying to reconnect people with nature (to promote human wellbeing and support for conservation). Both of these strategies are widespread and accepted approaches, and many conservation organisations and practitioners support doing both at once. But isn’t this a bit odd? Rather than trying to separate people from nature and then reconnect them, wouldn’t it make more sense not to separate people from nature in the first place? Continue reading →