Beyond people and nature: Conservation science for a new global reality
Overview
The tightly-coupled, cross-scale, dynamic, and uncertain nature of the Anthropocene requires an approach to sustainability that focuses on reimagining people-nature relationships rather than on static goals and outcomes. Social-ecological science suggests three avenues to help re-orient sustainable development for the Anthropocene: attend to relationships and interdependencies, focus on the cross-scale and cross-sector nature of these relationships, and consider the dynamic nature of these relationships. This project explores how these three avenues, and a new framing of “people with nature” that acknowledges the importance of diverse perspectives on the inseparability of people and nature, might lead to further improvements in sustainable development scholarship and practice.
Project Collaborators: co-led by Elena Bennett and Belinda Reyers
Key Messages
A new way to frame conservation science
The framings in use in conservation science aligned along three axes to show changes in the dominant value systems and perspectives on people-nature relationships in conservation science (x axis); shifts in the way conservation science is done and how it engages with disciplines and other knowledge systems (y axis); and how it conceptualizes and treats scale (z axis). As conservation science moves along these three axes, it evolves into a science that accepts and embraces change, uncertainty, and learning by promoting the processes of transformative change needed to strengthen and reimagine people-nature relationships.
Entry points to social-ecological science
The three entry points to improve engagement with the complexities of human-environment interactions in the Anthropocene, showing the previous way of thinking and the new way of thinking suggested by this entry point.