Nature conservation is the ethic/moral philosophy andconservation movement focused on protecting species fromextinction, maintaining and restoringhabitats, enhancingecosystem services, and protectingbiological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided bybiocentrism,anthropocentrism,ecocentrism, andsentientism,[1] environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities.[2] There has recently been a movement towardsevidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030.[3][4] In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected.[5][6] The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of theU.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity.[7][8]
Conservation goals includeconserving habitat, preventingdeforestation, maintainingsoil organic matter, halting speciesextinction, reducingoverfishing, and mitigatingclimate change. Different philosophical outlooks guide conservationists towards these different goals.
The principal value underlying many expressions of the conservation ethic is that the natural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value – a view carried forward by parts of the scientificconservation movement and some of the olderRomantic schools of theecology movement. Philosophers have attached intrinsic value to different aspects of nature, whether this is individual organisms (biocentrism) or ecological wholes such as species or ecosystems (ecoholism).[9]
Moreutilitarian schools of conservation have an anthropocentric outlook and seek a proper valuation oflocal and global impacts of human activity upon nature in their effect upon humanwellbeing, now and to posterity. How such values are assessed and exchanged among people determines the social, political and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced. This is a view common in the modernenvironmental movement. There is increasing interest in extending the responsibility for human wellbeing to include the welfare ofsentient animals. In 2022 the United Kingdom introduced theAnimal Welfare (Sentience) Act which lists all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans and cephalopods as sentient beings.[10] Branches of conservation ethics focusing on sentient individuals includeecofeminism[11] andcompassionate conservation.[12]
In the United States of America, the year 1864 saw the publication of two books which laid the foundation for Romantic and Utilitarian conservation traditions in America. The posthumous publication ofHenry David Thoreau'sWalden established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man. A very different book fromGeorge Perkins Marsh,Man and Nature, later subtitled "The Earth as Modified by Human Action", catalogued his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustenance derives. National Parks are important in the history of nature conservation, and some of the first parks were established in the USA. The historian Alfred Runte described how they first were set up and emphasized the role of "worthless lands", i.e. that mainly land of low commercial interest is protected, such as alpine and dry habitats. In addition, tourism, aesthetics, and "monumentalism" are important, according toAl Runte[13]
The consumer conservation ethic has been defined as the attitudes and behaviors held and engaged in by individuals and families that ultimately serve to reduce overall societal consumption of energy.[14][15] The conservation movement has emerged from the advancements of moral reasoning.[16] Increasing numbers of philosophers and scientists have made its maturation possible by considering the relationships between human beings and organisms with the same rigor.[17] This social ethic primarily relates tolocal purchasing,moral purchasing, thesustained, and efficient use ofrenewable resources, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such asair andwater quality, the natural functions of a living earth, and cultural values in abuilt environment. These practices are used to slow down the accelerating rate in whichextinction is occurring at. The origins of this ethic can be traced back to many different philosophical and religious beliefs; that is, these practices has been advocated for centuries. In the past, conservationism has been categorized under a spectrum of views, includinganthropocentric,utilitarian conservationism, and radicaleco-centric green eco-political views.
More recently, the three major movements has been grouped to become what we now know as conservation ethic. The person credited with formulating the conservation ethic in the United States is former president,Theodore Roosevelt.[18]
The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.
The term "conservation" was coined byGifford Pinchot in 1907. He told his close friend United States PresidentTheodore Roosevelt who used it for a national conference of governors in 1908.[20]
In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including biological diversity.Carl F. Jordan defines biological conservation as:[21]
a philosophy of managing the environment in a manner that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish.
While this usage is not new, the idea of biological conservation has been applied to the principles of ecology,biogeography,anthropology, economy, and sociology to maintainbiodiversity.
The term "conservation" itself may cover the concepts such ascultural diversity,genetic diversity, and the concept of movementsenvironmental conservation,seedbank curation (preservation of seeds), andgene bank coordination (preservation of animals' genetic material). These are often summarized as the priority to respect diversity.
Much recent movement in conservation can be considered a resistance tocommercialism andglobalization.Slow Food is a consequence of rejecting these as moral priorities, and embracing aslower and more locally focused lifestyle.
Sustainable living is a lifestyle that people are beginning to adopt, promoting to make decisions that would help protectbiodiversity.[22] The small lifestyle changes that promotesustainability will eventually accumulate into the proliferation of biological diversity. Regulating the ecolabeling of products from fisheries, controlling forsustainable food production, or keeping the lights off during the day are some examples of sustainable living.[23][24] However, sustainable living is not a simple and uncomplicated approach. A 1987 Brundtland Report expounds on the notion of sustainability as a process of change that looks different for everyone: "It is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward."[25] Simply put, sustainable living does make a difference by compiling many individual actions that encourage the protection ofbiological diversity.
Distinct trends exist regarding conservation development. The need for conserving land has only recently intensified during what some scholars refer to as theCapitalocene epoch. This era marks the beginning ofcolonialism,globalization, and theIndustrial Revolution that has led to global land change as well asclimate change.
While many countries' efforts to preservespecies and theirhabitats have been government-led, those in the North Western Europe tended to arise out of the middle-class and aristocratic interest innatural history, expressed at the level of the individual and the national, regional or locallearned society. Thus countries like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. had what would be callednon-governmental organizations – in the shape of theRoyal Society for the Protection of Birds,National Trust and County Naturalists' Trusts (dating back to 1889, 1895, and 1912 respectively) Natuurmonumenten, Provincial Conservation Trusts for each Dutch province, Vogelbescherming, etc. – a long time before there werenational parks andnational nature reserves.[26] This in part reflects the absence of wilderness areas in heavily cultivated Europe, as well as a longstanding interest inlaissez-faire government in some countries, like the UK, leaving it as no coincidence thatJohn Muir, the Scottish-born founder of the National Park movement (and hence of government-sponsored conservation) did his sterling work in the US, where he was the motor force behind the establishment of such national parks asYosemite andYellowstone. Nowadays, officially more than 10 percent of the world is legally protected in some way or the other, and in practice, private fundraising is insufficient to pay for the effective management of so much land with protective status.
Protected areas in developing countries, where probably as many as 70–80 percent of the species of the world live, still enjoy very little effective management and protection. Some countries, such as Mexico, have non-profit civil organizations and landowners dedicated to protecting vast private property, such is the case of Hacienda Chichen's Maya Jungle Reserve and Bird Refuge inChichen Itza,Yucatán.[27] The Adopt A Ranger Foundation has calculated that worldwide about 140,000 rangers are needed for the protected areas in developing and transition countries. There are no data on how many rangers are employed at the moment, but probably less than half the protected areas in developing and transition countries have any rangers at all and those that have them are at least 50% short. This means that there would be a worldwide ranger deficit of 105,000 rangers in the developing and transition countries.[citation needed]
The termsconservation andpreservation are frequently conflated outside the academic, scientific, and professional kinds of literature. The United States'National Park Service offers the following explanation of the important ways in which these two terms represent very different conceptions ofenvironmental protectionethics:
Conservation and preservation are closely linked and may indeed seem to mean the same thing. Both terms involve a degree of protection, but how that protection is carried out is the key difference. Conservation is generally associated with the protection of natural resources, while preservation is associated with the protection of buildings, objects, and landscapes. Put simply,conservation seeks the proper use of nature, while preservation seeks protection of nature from use.
— United States National Park Service[28]
During theenvironmental movement of the early 20th century, two opposing factions emerged: conservationists and preservationists. Conservationists sought to regulate human use while preservationists sought to eliminatehuman impact altogether."[29]
C. Anne Claus presents a distinction for conservation practices.[30] Claus divides conservation into conservation-far and conservation-near. Conservation-far is the means of protecting nature by separating it and safeguarding it from humans.[30] Means of doing this include the creation of preserves or national parks. They are meant to keep the flora and fauna away from human influence and have become a staple method in the west. Conservation-near however is conservation via connection. The method of reconnecting people to nature through traditions and beliefs to foster a desire to protect nature.[30] The basis is that instead of forcing compliance to separate from nature onto the people, instead conservationists work with locals and their traditions to find conservation efforts that work for all.[30]
Evidence-based conservation is the application of evidence in conservation management actions and policy making. It is defined as systematically assessing scientific information from published,peer-reviewed publications and texts, practitioners' experiences, independent expert assessment, and local andindigenous knowledge on a specific conservation topic. This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems, and economic factors.[31]
Evidence-based conservation was organized based on the observations thatdecision making in conservation was based onintuition and/or practitioner experience often disregarding other forms of evidence of successes and failures (e.g. scientific information). This has led to costly and poor outcomes.[32] Evidence-based conservation provides access to information that will support decision making through an evidence-based framework of "what works" in conservation.[33]
The evidence-based approach to conservation is based on evidence-based practice which started inmedicine and later spread tonursing,education,[34]psychology, and other fields. It is part of the larger movement towardsevidence-based practices.
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