Environment Seminar Series: In case it was not clear already: we need a conservation revolution! A call and proposal for a convivial alternative with Bram Büscher

About the Seminar

When it comes the major environmental crises of our time, we seem to have moved into a new phase: we are no longer warned that they are coming; they are already here and are having major impacts on human and nonhuman life. As the warnings and discourses become stronger and more explicit, we see actors scrambling to come to terms with this new reality and asking how to move forward. With respect to the global biodiversity crisis, this is well reflected in the conservation community. Indeed, over the last years we have seen the rise of several radical proposals for reforming conservation, culminating in the Kunming-Montreal ‘30x30’ biodiversity framework. In this presentation, Bram Büscher reflects on and evaluates these conservation proposals and the Kunming-Montreal framework. He argues that while they hold some seeds for radical change they are far from sufficient. Building on these reflections, he proposes an alternative vision under the banner of ‘convivial conservation’. Convivial conservation starts from a political ecological position centered on a critique of capitalism, the inequalities it creates and how it alienates humans from the rest of nature. It builds on this to turn conservation into a force that promotes rather than protects, that celebrates rather than saves, and that is recognized as an important element of creating a more equal global society. The presentation ends by positing ideas and questions on how convivial conservation could be operationalized in the North American context.

About the Speaker

Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg. In 2021, he was fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in Stellenbosch, and in 2017 he held a Van Zyl Slabbert professorship at the University of Cape Town. From 2008-2015, Bram lectured at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD cum laude from VU University Amsterdam in 2009. 

Bram’s research is concerned with changing human-nature relations and environment-development interactions in the context of late capitalism. His many publications include work on the politics of biodiversity, the links between post-truth, social media and nature, and forms of ‘green violence’. His broader intellectual project seeks to bring human-nonhuman relations and biodiversity conservation deeper into our understanding of the trajectories of global capitalism while imagining post-growth convivial ways forward. His research has been supported by various funders, including Belmont Forum/Norface, the Oak Foundation and through prestigious NWO (Dutch Research Foundation) Veni and Vidi excellence grants.

Bram is the author of Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa (Duke University Press, 2013). Together with Robert Fletcher, he authored The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond The Anthropocene, which was published in 2020 by Verso and has been translated into Spanish, German and French. His most recent book, The Truth About Nature. Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform Capitalism came out with University of California Press in 2021. Bram is one of the senior editors of the open-access journal Conservation & Society (www.conservationandsociety.org). 

For more information, and access to publications, see: www.brambuscher.com.