Nature conservation

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Natural conservation" redirects here. For the study of biodiversity management, see Conservation biology. For other uses, see Conservation (disambiguation).

Satellite photograph of industrial deforestation in the Tierras Bajas project in eastern Bolivia, using skyline logging
and replacement of forests by agriculture
Much attention has been given to preserving the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls
, Australia, while allowing access for visitors

Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and

sentientism,[1] environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities.[2] There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030.[3][4] In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected.[5][6] The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of the U.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity.[7][8] Ultimately, these movements should be further promoted to encourage biodiversity and to conserve a functional ecosystem
.

Introduction

Conservation goals include conserving habitat, preventing deforestation, maintaining soil organic matter, halting species extinction, reducing overfishing, and mitigating climate change. Different philosophical outlooks guide conservationists towards these different goals.

The principal value underlying many expressions of the conservation ethic is that the natural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value – a view carried forward by parts of the scientific

ecology movement. Philosophers have attached intrinsic value to different aspects of nature, whether this is individual organisms (biocentrism) or ecological wholes such as species or ecosystems (ecoholism).[9]

More

wellbeing, now and to posterity. How such values are assessed and exchanged among people determines the social, political and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced. This is a view common in the modern environmental movement. There is increasing interest in extending the responsibility for human wellbeing to include the welfare of sentient animals. In 2022 the United Kingdom introduced the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act which lists all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans and cephalopods as sentient beings.[10] Branches of conservation ethics focusing on sentient individuals include ecofeminism[11] and compassionate conservation.[12]

In the United States of America, the year 1864 saw the publication of two books which laid the foundation for Romantic and Utilitarian conservation traditions in America. The posthumous publication of Henry David Thoreau's Walden established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man. A very different book from George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, later subtitled "The Earth as Modified by Human Action", catalogued his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustenance derives.

The consumer conservation ethic has been defined as the attitudes and behaviors held and engaged in by individuals and families that ultimately serve to reduce overall societal consumption of energy.

moral purchasing, the sustained, and efficient use of renewable resources, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such as air and water quality, the natural functions of a living earth, and cultural values in a built environment. These practices are utilized to slow down the accelerating rate in which extinction is occurring at. The origins of this ethic can be traced back to many different philosophical and religious beliefs; that is, these practices has been advocated for centuries. In the past, conservationism has been categorized under a spectrum of views, including anthropocentric, utilitarian conservationism, and radical eco-centric
green eco-political views.

More recently, the three major movements has been grouped to become what we now know as conservation ethic. The person credited with formulating the conservation ethic in the United States is former president, Theodore Roosevelt.[17]

Terminology

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.

Theodore Roosevelt[18]

In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including biological diversity. Carl F. Jordan defines the term as:[19]

biological conservation as being a philosophy of managing the environment in a manner that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish.

While this usage is not new, the idea of biological conservation has been applied to the principles of ecology, biogeography, anthropology, economy, and sociology to maintain biodiversity.

The term "conservation" itself may cover the concepts such as

seedbank curation (preservation of seeds), and gene bank
coordination (preservation of animals’ genetic material). These are often summarized as the priority to respect diversity.

Much recent movement in conservation can be considered a resistance to

slower and more locally focused lifestyle
.

biological diversity
.

Practice

Daintree Rainforest in Queensland
, Australia

Distinct trends exist regarding conservation development. The need for conserving land has only recently intensified during what some scholars refer to as the

industrial revolution that has led to global land change as well as climate change
.

While many countries' efforts to preserve

Yellowstone
. Nowadays, officially more than 10 percent of the world is legally protected in some way or the other, and in practice, private fundraising is insufficient to pay for the effective management of so much land with protective status.

Protected areas in developing countries, where probably as many as 70–80 percent of the species of the world live, still enjoy very little effective management and protection. Some countries, such as Mexico, have non-profit civil organizations and landowners dedicated to protecting vast private property, such is the case of Hacienda Chichen's Maya Jungle Reserve and Bird Refuge in

Yucatán.[25] The Adopt A Ranger Foundation has calculated that worldwide about 140,000 rangers are needed for the protected areas in developing and transition countries. There are no data on how many rangers are employed at the moment, but probably less than half the protected areas in developing and transition countries have any rangers at all and those that have them are at least 50% short. This means that there would be a worldwide ranger deficit of 105,000 rangers in the developing and transition countries.[citation needed
]

The terms conservation and preservation are frequently conflated outside the academic, scientific, and professional kinds of literature. The United States' National Park Service offers the following explanation of the important ways in which these two terms represent very different conceptions of environmental protection ethics:

Conservation and preservation are closely linked and may indeed seem to mean the same thing. Both terms involve a degree of protection, but how that protection is carried out is the key difference. Conservation is generally associated with the protection of natural resources, while preservation is associated with the protection of buildings, objects, and landscapes. Put simply, conservation seeks the proper use of nature, while preservation seeks protection of nature from use.

— United States National Park Service[26]

During the environmental movement of the early 20th century, two opposing factions emerged: conservationists and preservationists. Conservationists sought to regulate human use while preservationists sought to eliminate human impact altogether.″[27]

C. Anne Claus presents a distinction for conservation practices.[28] Claus divides conservation into conservation-far and conservation-near. Conservation-far is the means of protecting nature by separating it and safeguarding it from humans.[28] Means of doing this include the creation of preserves or national parks. They're meant to keep the flora and fauna away from human influence and have become a staple method in the west. Conservation-near however is conservation via connection. The method of reconnecting people to nature through traditions and beliefs in order to foster a desire to protect nature.[28] The basis is that instead of forcing compliance to separate from nature onto the people, instead conservationists work with locals and their traditions to find conservation efforts that work for all.[28]

Evidence-based conservation

Main article: Evidence-based conservation

Evidence-based conservation is the application of evidence in conservation management actions and policy making. It is defined as systematically assessing scientific information from published,

indigenous knowledge on a specific conservation topic. This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems, and economic factors.[29]

decision making in conservation was based on intuition and/or practitioner experience often disregarding other forms of evidence of successes and failures (e.g. scientific information). This has led to costly and poor outcomes.[30] Evidence-based conservation provides access to information that will support decision making through an evidence-based framework of “what works” in conservation.[31]

The evidence-based approach to conservation is based on evidence-based practice which started in

evidence-based practices
.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9781139024105.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  2. ^ Milstein, T. & Castro-Sotomayor, J. (2020). Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity. London, UK: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840
  3. ^ MARRIS, EMMA (31 January 2019). "To keep the planet flourishing, 30% of Earth needs protection by 2030". National Geographic. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  4. ^ "New Australian Marine Parks Protect an Area Twice the Size of the Great Barrier Reef". Mongabay. Ecowatch. 14 May 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  5. ^ "Governments achieve target of protecting 17% of land globally". the Guardian. 19 May 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  6. ^ "2021's top ocean news stories (commentary)". Mongabay Environmental News. 28 December 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  7. ^ Januta, Andrea (1 March 2022). "Key takeaways from the IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
  8. ^ "Negotiators agree to historic biodiversity deal at COP15". euronews. 19 December 2022. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  9. ^ Gardiner and Thompson (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics. OUP.
  10. ^ "Animals to be formally recognised as sentient beings in domestic law". GOV.UK. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  11. S2CID 145174389
    .
  12. PMID 32144823
    .
  13. JSTOR 23859354
    .
  14. JSTOR 2488881
    .
  15. JSTOR 41373777
    .
  16. ISSN 2186-8433
    .
  17. ^ "The Conservation Ethic & The Founding the US Forest Service". Alpha Steward. 10 April 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  18. ^ Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the Deep Waterway Convention Memphis, TN, October 4, 1907
  19. ISBN 0-471-59515-2
    .
  20. ^ Cities, Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Group on Sustainable (2013). "Resiliency and Environmental Sustainability". The Urban Opportunity: 28–34.
  21. S2CID 30842161
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  22. PMID 17827110
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  23. OCLC 732496026
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-909971-01-4
  25. ^ Haciendachichen.com, "The Importance of Eco-Design"
  26. ^ "Conservation, Preservation, and the National Park Service - Teachers (U.S. National Park Service)".
  27. ^ National Park Service: Conservation versus preservation
  28. ^
    ISBN 978-1-5179-0662-7
    .
  29. ^ "The Basics". Conservation Evidence. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  30. PMID 16701275
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  31. doi:10.1111/j.1526-4629.2003.tb00068.x
    .
  32. ^ David G. Hebert, (2022), “Nature Conservation and Music Sustainability: Fields with Shared Concerns", Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 25, p.175–189.

Further reading

External links

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