Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Conservation biology
Because the fi eld of conservation biology is centrally concerned with maintaining
biological diversity (Society for Conservation Biology, 2007), it necessarily examines
interconnections among social and ecological processes: what actions degrade the
environment, and which will contribute to conserving it? Yet some conservation
biologists criticise the notion of sustainability precisely because it embraces social
questions about economics and equity. They worry that sustainability 'poses the
particular risk that ecological and biodiversity concerns will be cast aside in favor
of more pressing human wants' (Newton and Freyfogle, 2005, p. 23). Writing in
direct response, Padoch and Sears (2005) point out that this view is part of the long
history of global conservation politics, in which 'poor rural people around the planet
have repeatedly received and rejected already too-simplifi ed versions of urban and
developed-country conservation priorities' (p. 40). In contrast, they see sustainabil-
ity as an opportunity for those concerned about the environment to work with,
rather than against, poor people of the world to address interlocked 'problems that
affect the health and well-being of our own and other communities and of the
environments in which we live. We need to know what our roles are in creating
those problems and be engaged collectively in solving them' (p. 41).
Geographers are pushing discussion about importance of social issues within
conservation in important directions. Campbell (2002) examines debates about
sustainable use of the environment (in this case, endangered sea turtles and their
eggs), fi nding that managers have a hard time addressing social concerns; biologi-
cal science 'remains the privileged language' of the experts she interviewed (p.
1243). McSweeney (2005) engages debates about effects of population growth
among indigenous peoples on tropical forests. She fi nds that in place of strategies
such as fertility reduction, conservationists should use social science to address
broader social dynamics regarding women's conservation activities and enforce-
ment of indigenous territorial rights. Further, these social dynamics are fundamen-
tally political, in that they are about power relations among various different
groups of people.
Sustainability is particularly useful in the context of debates such as this about
the necessity of addressing social dynamics. Because it explicitly forges a bridge
between social and ecological concerns, reference to sustainability prevents with-
drawal from politics into the technical. It does so by highlighting ways that politics
are a key part of human-environment interactions, and by showing that a retreat
into seemingly objective concerns about the environment is a political tactic. Such
a retreat makes a political statement not only about what is important, but about
what gets to count as relevant knowledge that can contribute to forging more sus-
tainable human-environment relations.
Sustainability science
Another fi eld to which geographers have made major contributions is sustainability
science, which provides information regarding socio-economic and environmental
patterns, causes of problems, and potential solutions (Kates et al., 2001; Clark and
Dickson, 2003; Clark, 2007). Sustainability science is founded on the premise of
bridging and integrating. As one of its founders put it, its 'core focus' is 'coupled
human-environment systems' (Clark, 2007, p. 1737). The fi eld is also explicitly
