Transforming Conservation for the 21st Century

As a photographer, artist, and conservationist, I have repeatedly observed that when humans are suffering, that suffering will be made visible on the land and in the water. The enormous effects of our behavior make us the ultimate keystone species, and the implications to conservation are provocative. One cannot begin to meaningfully address loss of biological diversity or climate change without addressing human poverty, the destructive forces of the divides among races and classes, and the desire to improve one’s quality of life. I believe that the primary challenge to conservation today is transforming our perspective from one that is primarily about biological diversity or science or even stewardship to one that also is about the making of lives that are worth living. If we do this, not only will far more people be drawn to conservation, but conservation itself will become stronger and more enduring. Querencia, a mestizo word, was defined by the Indo-Hispano cultural geographer Estevan Arellano as the tendency of humans to return to where they were born, affection, responsibility, the space where one feels secure, the place of one’s memories, the tendency to love and be loved. This and similar words in other languages suggest that our affection for and responsibility to one another are intimately connected to our relationship to place, to land and water, to nature. Central to achieving a transformation of perspective is our capacity to leverage science, our capacity to leverage difference, and our ability to recognize difference as the true power of the 21st century. I use the word difference in place of diversity. On the basis of my experience as a conservationist, a white man, and a U.S. citizen, I believe that race trumps all other forms of difference, but if conservation professionals in thinking about human society see diversity as only being about race, they will not be able to engage and accept the full set of human differences—gender, class, sexual orientation, political ideology—that can be a factor in the probability of conservation success. Without a broad acceptance of difference, it is unlikely we will come to understand what it will take to transform ourselves. Why transform conservation? Because the world emerging now is dramatically different from the demographics of the 1950s and 1960s, when modern conservation was born. I write from the perspective of a dominant gender and culture, and I know how the world is changing. For example, by 2042, my race will be a minority in the United States. Those who are currently in the minority in my country have had far less access to and benefits from healthy land and water, and ultimately this has not been good for biological diversity because inequity will always be a threat to the health of people and the land. How will biological diversity be conserved by the middle of the century if children today do not know and do not care about it? Is it possible that the 110,000 protected areas worldwide can achieve conservation objectives given a population that largely does not understand or relate to biological diversity, perhaps does not care about it, and, right now, is asking for a higher quality of life? Ideas about isolation, innovation, and transformation have helped me consider how conservation perspectives can change and can align more closely with other movements and other human needs.