Rethinking biodiversity: from goods and services to “living with”

Conservation Letters

Esther Turnhout³  Claire Waterton²  Katja Neves¹ 

[1] Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada;Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, United Kingdom;Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

关键词: Biodiversity;    discourse;    ecosystem services;    global governance;    IPBES;    neoliberal conservation;    science‐policy interface;   

DOI  :  10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00307.x

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Since the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, counting and mapping have come to dominate international debates around biodiversity protection. With the emergence of the Ecosystem Services concept, these counting and mapping efforts are increasingly imbued with an economic logic that argues that to save biodiversity, its goods and services must be given monetary value. This article offers a critical engagement with the Ecosystem Services discourse and the way it translates the diversity of nature into a single measure—a “currency”—to be included in systems of exchange. We argue that this conception of biodiversity is too narrow and potentially detrimental because it reduces biodiversity to a series of quantifiable fragmented parts that become liable to counting, mapping, and utilitarian use, and because it reduces social–natural relations to market transactions. Subsequently, we outline possibilities for conceiving and living with biodiversity that go beyond relations of counting, mapping, and commodification. It is important that biodiversity knowledge organizations, such as the recently sanctioned Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), take these into account. Conserving a diversity of life requires acknowledging a diversity of values, knowledge and framings of biodiversity, and fostering a diversity of social–natural relations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
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