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Conservación y el Mito del Consenso
Author(s) -
PETERSON M. NILS,
PETERSON MARKUS J.,
PETERSON TARLA RAI
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00518.x
Subject(s) - argumentative , environmental governance , political science , environmental ethics , democracy , corporate governance , environmental communication , environmental policy , power (physics) , environmental planning , sociology , politics , geography , economics , public relations , law , philosophy , physics , finance , quantum mechanics
Environmental policy makers are embracing consensus‐based approaches to environmental decision making in an attempt to enhance public participation in conservation and facilitate the potentially incompatible goals of environmental protection and economic growth. Although such approaches may produce positive results in immediate spatial and temporal contexts and under some forms of governance, their overuse has potentially dangerous implications for conservation within many democratic societies. We suggest that environmental decision making rooted in consensus theory leads to the dilution of socially powerful conservation metaphors and legitimizes current power relationships rooted in unsustainable social constructions of reality. We also suggest an argumentative model of environmental decision making rooted in ecology will facilitate progressive environmental policy by placing the environmental agenda on firmer epistemological ground and legitimizing challenges to current power hegemonies that dictate unsustainable practices.