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Conservation and Justice the Anthropocene: Definitions and Debates

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Abstract

As many in society work towards global sustainability, we live at a time when efforts to conserve biodiversity and geodiversity, and combat climate change, take place simultaneously with land grabs by large corporations, food insecurity, and human displacement through an ecological breakdown. Many of us seek to reconcile more-than-human nature and human nature, and to balance intrinsic value and the current human expansion phase. These and other challenges will fundamentally alter the way people, depending on their worldview and ethics, relate to communities and the environment.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

—Edward Abbey (1968: 169).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Helen Kopnina

  2. PANGEA Research Centre, BEES, UNSW, Kensington, Australia

    Haydn Washington

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  1. Helen Kopnina
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  2. Haydn Washington
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Correspondence to Helen Kopnina .

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  1. Leiden University, Institute Cultural Anthropology Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Helen Kopnina

  2. Kensington Campus , Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Haydn Washington

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Kopnina, H., Washington, H. (2020). Conservation and Justice the Anthropocene: Definitions and Debates. In: Kopnina, H., Washington, H. (eds) Conservation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13905-6_1

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