Climate science is monopolized, so is conservation science

Knowledge from indigenous scholars and communities plays a crucial role in managing global ecosystems and biodiversity conservation. As such, it is stipulated as Target 18 of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Pathways to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Marine Science and Conservation

Marine conservation sciences have traditionally been, and remain, non-diverse work environments with many barriers to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI). These barriers disproportionately affect entry of early career scientists and practitioners and limit the success of marine conservation professionals from under-represented, marginalized, and overburdened groups. These groups specifically include women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). However, the issues also arise from the global North/South and East/West divide with under-representation of scientists from the South and East in the global marine conservation and science arena. Persisting inequities in conservation, along with a lack of inclusiveness and diversity, also limit opportunities for innovation, cross-cultural knowledge exchange, and effective implementation of conservation and management policies. As part of its mandate to increase diversity and promote inclusion of underrepresented groups, the Diversity and Inclusion committee of the Society for Conservation Biology-Marine Section (SCB Marine) organized a JEDI focus group at the Sixth International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC6) which was held virtually. The focus group included a portion of the global cohort of IMCC6 attendees who identified issues affecting JEDI in marine conservation and explored pathways to address those issues. Therefore, the barriers and pathways identified here focus on issues pertinent to participants’ global regions and experiences. Several barriers to just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive conservation science and practice were identified. Examples included limited participation of under-represented minorities (URM) in research networks, editorial biases against URM, limited professional development and engagement opportunities for URM and non-English speakers, barriers to inclusion of women, LGBTQ+, and sensory impaired individuals, and financial barriers to inclusion of URM in all aspects of marine conservation and research. In the current policy brief, we explore these barriers, assess how they limit progress in marine conservation research and practice, and seek to identify initiatives for improvements. We expect the initiatives discussed here to advances practices rooted in principles of JEDI, within SCB Marine and, the broader conservation community. The recommendations and perspectives herein broadly apply to conservation science and practice, and are critical to effective and sustainable conservation and management outcomes.

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The most ‘Economically-Important Number-One Consumption-Vegetable-Crops,’ is lost by different pathogens like nematodes, causing the root-knot disease which is definitely controlled by different chemical-pesticides, and on the opposite hand, the pandemic coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreaks of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have emphasized the vulnerability of human populations to novel viral pressures, causing an emergent global pandemic and badly impacts on horticulture-agriculture-environment health socio-economy medical-pharmaceutical science-technology communication issues. So it's an urgent have to develop potential epidemiological and biomedical preventing COVID-19 vaccines. And India emphasis on okra, the ‘Nature's-Gift to Human-Disease-Free-Healthy-Life’, and therefore the ultra-high-diluted biomedicines prepared from okra root, applied and confirmed by foliar spray@ 20 ml/plant each group respectively, are highly effective against the root-knot disease of okra, with increasing fresh-plant growth and fruit production. The high-diluted-biomedicines of okra, are simpler than the untreated ones and show the foremost potential confirmed end in all respects. The genetic-effects of ultra-high-diluted-biomedicines thought to induce systemic acquired resistance response of the treated plants through the expression of pathogenesis-related -proteins-genes (22 to 4 numbers), which are more or less similar molecular range (295kD to 11kD) of the many coronaviruses, and it'll to blame for preventing root-knot and COVID-19 like variant-virus diseases by inducing defense-resistance or increasing innate-immunity, with the toxic-free world, and it should help to develop best potential new preventive treatments methods or drug or vaccines, within the field of ‘21st Century COVID-19 sort of a pandemic within the new normal situation in future, and confirms the “Economic okra Act as a Preventive-COVID-19 Vaccine Advanced Horticulture Agriculture Environment Biodiversity Conservation Science Technology-Communication Applications”, and whole plant act as ‘Nature's-Gift Preventive-COVID-19 Vaccine for All’.

Climate science is monopolized, so is conservation science

I think that the Western monopoly is not limited to only climate science but also conservation science. Climate change and biodiversity loss are reaching the point of no return. They are global problems, so the Global North and Global South must unite before too late. Voices of non-Western climate and conservation scholars should be valued adequately, and cooperation initiatives, like for a Place, should be promoted and implemented widely.

The Arts of Coexistence: A View From Anthropology

In this perspectives essay, I propose some ways in which current thinking in anthropology might inform the emergent cross-disciplinary field of coexistence studies. I do so following recent calls from within the conservation science community (including this special issue), acknowledging that understanding human-wildlife coexistence in the fractured landscapes of the Anthropocene1 requires being open to alternative approaches beyond conventional frameworks of conservation science and management (see for instance; Carter and Linnell, 2016; Pooley, 2016; Chapron and López-Bao, 2019; Pooley et al., 2020). The essay suggests that relational (non-dualist) ways of thinking2 in anthropology, often building on Indigenous philosophy and expertise, may help ground coexistence studies beyond Euro-Western modernist conceptual frameworks—frameworks that perpetuate exploitative and colonial logics that many scholars from across academia view as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis (e.g., Lestel, 2013; van Dooren, 2014; Tsing, 2015; Todd, 2016; Bluwstein et al., 2021; Schroer et al., 2021). By proposing “relations” rather than objectified “Nature” or “wildlife” as the more adequate subject of understanding and facilitating coexistence in shared landscapes, I understand coexistence and its study first and foremost as an ethical and political endeavor. Rather than offering any conclusive ideas, the essay's intention is to contribute some questions and thoughts to the developing conversations of coexistence studies scholars and practitioners. It does so by inviting conservation scientists to collaborate with anthropologists and take on board some of the current thinking in the discipline. Amongst other things, I suggest that this will help overcome a somewhat dated notion of cultural relativism—understood as many particular, cultural views on one true objective Nature (only known by Science), a perspective that explicitly and implicitly seems to inform some conservation science approaches to issues of culture or the “human dimensions” of conservation issues. Ultimately, the paper seeks to make a conceptual contribution by imagining coexistence as a dynamic bundle of relations in which the biological, ecological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions cannot be thought apart and have to be studied together.

Overcoming racism in the twin spheres of conservation science and practice

It is time to acknowledge and overcome conservation's deep-seated systemic racism, which has historically marginalized Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) communities and continues to do so. We describe how the mutually reinforcing ‘twin spheres’ of conservation science and conservation practice perpetuate this systemic racism. We trace how institutional structures in conservation science (e.g. degree programmes, support and advancement opportunities, course syllabuses) can systematically produce conservation graduates with partial and problematic conceptions of conservation's history and contemporary purposes. Many of these graduates go on to work in conservation practice, reproducing conservation's colonial history by contributing to programmes based on outmoded conservation models that disproportionately harm rural BIPOC communities and further restrict access and inclusion for BIPOC conservationists. We provide practical, actionable proposals for breaking vicious cycles of racism in the system of conservation we have with virtuous cycles of inclusion, equality, equity and participation in the system of conservation we want.

In the Climate Emergency, Conservation Must Become Survival Ecology

Earth faces a climate emergency which renders conservation goals largely obsolete. Current conservation actions are inadequate because they (i) underplay biodiversity's role in maintaining human civilisation, which contributes to its marginalisation, and (ii) rely on false assumptions of how to catalyse transformative change. We suggest a paradigm shift from biodiversity conservation to survival ecology, refocusing the field on safeguarding a planetary system in which humans and other species can thrive. Rather than seeking to maintain a world which will no longer exist, survival ecology acknowledges unavoidable change and seeks to shape the world that will: it looks to the future, not the past. Since conservation science and advocacy have not been sufficient to achieve the required change, survival ecologists should additionally embrace non-violent civil disobedience.