Governance as if people, democracy and conservation matter | C.R Bijoy

Governance as if people, democracy and conservation matter is embedded in social and environmental justice, expressed through ethics, morality, culture and spirituality. It is an outcome of intense political struggle for deepening democracy. The human species is the only species that organizes production. We organize society in ways that suit the way we organize production. Conservation ethics expresses itself through the ethic of natural resource allocation, their use and protection. The extent to which conservation ethics actually play a role in production varies with corresponding results - over time, geographies and peoples.

The centrality of conservation ethics has now come to the fore quite harshly and intensely, faced with the unprecedented species extinction, the sixth in the past half a billion years, the innumerable catastrophic devastations from climate change impacts and the poisoning of the lands, waters and air. Paradoxically this is happening when technological change has leapfrogged from a steady linear progression to an exponential rate of growth that virtually fuels itself. Despite this, and the enormous financial and human resource potential, conservation ethics are not at the core of conservation strategies. Instead it is reduced to unworkable simplistic notion of values, development models, laws and regulatory systems, and consumption; of reduced industrial footprint and adopting techno-optimistic alternatives, and alternative ways of living and working. Yes, these sound so romantic.

The way forward is to undo the structures and forces of production, and set in motion the creation of a mechanism to reorganize production in ways that sustains our lives and creates a sustainable future.

Commoditising conservation
But conservation is primarily shaped by economic considerations and by the market rather than the science of conservation. They are appropriately packaged, labeled and advertised, effectively concealing the reality of deceptive land grab, and the expropriation of livelihood and cultural resources of communities. A conservation aristocracy, a distinct breed within conservationists, dominates with their deafening silence on the violence wreaked on the peoples