Conservation has tried to use capitalist forces as a basis for actually generating income and revenue to support conservation itself - you can argue that these mechanisms have not been good for nature, but they haven't been wholly destructive - they've been mostly problematic in terms of obscuring or disguising the things that capitalist extractive processes are doing, making it seem that these can be offset, that they can be rendered part of a sustainable capitalism more generally. That's the real danger of these market based mechanisms - they keep us in an illusion that we can use capitalism to solve the problems generated by capitalism itself.

Sociologists Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher explore the limits and possibilities of nature conservation in the Anthropocene, and point to the framework of 'convivial conservation' as a way of understanding ourselves and our environment beyond the destructive contradictions of capitalism.

Bram and Robert are authors of the book The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene from Verso Books.

Guest

Bram Buscher

@brambuscher

Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and holds visiting positions at the University of Johannesburg and Stellenbosch University.

brambuscher.com