Presentation short abstract

Through a comparative case study in Zambia, I question whether there is greater evidence of ecological justice in the donor-dependent North Luangwa landscape than in South Luangwa, where nature has been commodified for profit. My research reveals a surprise finding—a form of ‘converging divergence’.

Presentation long abstract

While public finance has been the largest source of funds to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation, recent shifts have caused a re-think of this modality. Despite public commitments to triple climate finance by 2035, US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and his closure of USAID undermine the potential to achieve this. Trump’s actions highlight the implications of the worldwide rise in right-wing populist governments. Their focus on the national—at the expense of the global—calls for a fresh look at the potential of the market to contribute to the financing of global public goods. Through a comparative case study in Zambia, I question whether there is greater evidence of financial sustainability or ecological justice in the donor-dependent North Luangwa landscape than in South Luangwa, where nature has been ‘commodified’ for profit (e.g., through park tourism and Africa's largest REDD+ project). My expectation was that the different funding models would provide contrasting results in perceptions of equity and wellbeing amongst local stakeholders. My research revealed a surprise finding—a form of ‘converging divergence’. The greatest divergence between the two landscapes is the psychology of dependency (the ‘economy of expectations’). There is convergence however in two areas—namely the desire to generate sustainable revenue streams and the challenge of good governance (particularly in Zambia’s fragmented policy environment). A tendency towards neo-patrimonialism and elite capture of benefits hampers the ability to finance global public goods equitably and sustainably—whether the source of finance is commercial or aid-based.

Presentation short abstract

This research shows how consulting firms have become key actors in conservation governance, demonstrating how private expertise mediates between extraction and species protection by stabilizing competing ecological, legal, and political realities

Presentation long abstract

Consulting firms are playing an increasingly significant, albeit overlooked, role in the administration of global conservation goals. Existing research suggests their rise can be seen as part of the broader project of neoliberal deregulation and declining state capacity, which have pushed governments to outsource responsibilities to private actors with specialized market-based expertise. Labeling the consultification of conservation governance as another iteration of the neoliberal natures paradigm, however, risks overlooking the fact that third-party involvement in conservation decision-making functionally predates mainstream deregulatory reforms. In this paper, I argue that rather than being driven solely by state retreat, the turn to private consultants was fueled by a need for a particular kind of expertise capable of meshing the extension of legal protections for more-than-human life with the extractive status quo. Centering the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a case study, I draw on government archives, industry publications, and interviews with practitioners to document the rise and spread of consulting firms as key actors in reconciling resource extraction with conservation law. I interrogate the function and character of consultant involvement in contested ESA decisions and identify private expertise as a critical agent in balancing and singularizing the multiple and competing ontological realities necessary to render extraction legally defensible. This work highlights the importance of examining the origins of seemingly novel conservation actors and calls for greater attention to the political materiality of expertise in shaping compromises, power relations, and conservation futures at the interface of extraction and ecological protection.

Presentation short abstract

Sport is increasingly cast as an urban biodiversity champion, yet a comparative multi-scalar study of three English Premier League clubs finds stadium actions are modest while training-ground expansion and sponsorship/resource relations displace biodiversity pressures to the urban edge and beyond.

Presentation long abstract

Sports organisations are increasingly positioned as biodiversity actors, purportedly able to mobilise publics, land, and capital. This paper examines what that looks like in practice through a comparative, multi-scalar case study of three London-based English Premier League (EPL) clubs.

The data comprise 103 systematically collected planning documents for stadium and training-ground developments, club press releases and sustainability reports, and a time-bounded corpus of media reporting. I use document analysis to map (1) club-led biodiversity initiatives, (2) the biodiversity consequences of stadium and training-ground development, and (3) sponsorship and resource relations (coded by sector and for any documented links to biodiversity initiatives).

Across cases, I find a recurring mismatch between the rhetorical scale of “biodiversity leadership” and the material scale of intervention (or lack thereof). Stadium-adjacent actions (green roofs, bat boxes, wildflower planting) are small and episodic. By contrast, training-ground expansion at the urban edge intensifies tensions over biodiversity loss in metropolitan green-belt landscapes and is negotiated through planning regimes, often via compensatory or offsetting logics.

Biodiversity pressures are further displaced through resource relations. High-impact operations, consumer marketing, and sponsorship portfolios (e.g., aviation, cruise shipping, fossil fuels) sit uneasily with “biodiversity leadership” claims and are therefore kept outside biodiversity-related debate. I argue that evaluating these “new conservation actors” requires accountability that extends beyond visible interventions around stadiums to include land-use change, finance, and the broader production of sporting entertainment.

Presentation short abstract

Gardeners are increasingly being reimagined as conservation actors. This paper argues the ‘wildlife gardener’ subject is wedded to an ideal of propertied home and individual owner/subject, which doesn’t accord with the garden worlds of diverse, classed communities, or animals themselves.

Presentation long abstract

In the face of mounting socioecological crises gardens are increasingly being reimagined as conservation spaces. No longer simply private sites where we grow plants and pursue leisure activities, domestic gardens are now touted by conservationists as spaces where we can repair ecological harms. And wildlife gardeners are represented as the people who can make this change. This opens up a huge amount of space for conservation action: in the UK over 25% of total urban area is made up of domestic gardens. This paper is drawn from a research project undertaking a critical natural history of suburban gardens in London. It challenges the efficacy of the wildlife gardening paradigm. I argue that the construct of the ‘wildlife gardener’ is wedded to a historically constituted ideal of a propertied home, and an individual subject/owner, which emerged from 19th century capitalist suburbanisation and its associated ideology of the home as private space for the individual-self. This does not accord with the ecological scale needed for meaningful impact on biodiversity, and the lives of animals that do not experience these sites as individual spaces but as entire landscapes of interconnected gardens. It also neglects the garden worlds of diverse, classed communities, whose orientations towards their gardens are mediated by a range of sociocultural, affective and political dispositions. I show how the idea of the 'the wildlife gardener' subject obscures the necessity for wildlife gardening to challenge and rethink property, community and local democratic action if it is to achieve its goals.

Presentation short abstract

New narratives are forming, and practices implemented, regarding wetlands as security buffers for critical infrastructure. Drawing on empirical wetlands-focused fieldwork with elder conservation volunteers this paper examines how elder agency is unwittingly enmeshed within energy-material complexes.

Presentation long abstract

Wetlands’ unruly nature, as dynamic, liminal spaces where earth, water and air meet in flux states, creates paradoxical conservation practices. Their shifting material form means that hegemonic agricultural or developmental processes are incompatible within them; positioning them either as wastelands only useful for ‘drain and reclaim’ approaches, or as sanctuaries for wildlife and biodiversity. New narratives are forming within which wetlands serve as security spaces; their lack of viable on-site infrastructure means they act as buffer zones to adjacent high-risk spaces, offering reduced human presence through complex access routes. In the UK this repositioning of wetlands as sentinel protective waterscapes is evident in the 2022 development of the ‘Somerset Wetlands scheme’, an amalgamation of seven wetland reserves spanning 6000 hectares in western England. These wetlands’ consolidation have mirrored the expansion of the adjoining Hinkley Point C nuclear facility and the nascent expansion of Avonmouth docks as an ‘Enterprise area’ along the strategic River Severn estuary. These wetlands act as both flood barriers to the port, and as water purifiers for the nuclear facility. Yet the physical recreation of the space as a conservation area is mainly left to elder volunteers enacting agency in a post-work phase of their lives. Their unpaid labour enables the securitisation of profit-focused energy and transport behemoths which share the same coastline stretch. This paper explores this wetlands site in more detail, drawing upon empirical interviews with elder conservation volunteers to understand how their care for these wetlands acknowledges, ignores or reframes these ecological power relationships.

Presentation short abstract

Independent journalists in autocratic India expose environmental harm while also navigating oligopolist media space. Despite risks, their reportage on Kaziranga has halted destructive projects, repositioning them as key conservation actors who bring state accountability and mobilize resistance.

Presentation long abstract

Independent journalists in India are (re)emerging as crucial actors in biodiversity conservation amid growing authoritarianism and corporate capture of the media. Under the current autocratic regime, environmental regulations have been diluted to facilitate extractivism, aided by corporate political funding. The government presents the corporatized economy as ‘development’, and dissenters who challenge this face coercion. Parallelly, the shift in mass media ownership, i.e., consolidated by few corporations, the space for critical journalism has shrunk. This vacuum is now occupied by independent media houses and journalists, making them critical for maintaining accountability in the conservation sector.

This on-going research examines how journalists take on the role of environmental defenders within authoritarian regimes and oligopolistic media economies. Using the case study of Kaziranga National Park, Assam, the study examines the journalistic challenges when they depart from the state narrative of the Park’s success and question the militaristic protection and racial-capitalist model of conservation. Critical reportage from the landscape has mobilized public dissent and halted corporate projects that violate environmental norms and human-rights, such as the proposed construction of a five-star hotel on tribal land and an elephant corridor.

By inquiring why journalists and independent media houses choose to report despite political risk, this work explores the motivations of journalists for participating in conservation. This study argues that the fluid identity and skills of journalists repositions them as important conservation actors whose intervention through various forms of reportage shapes larger conservation activism that shapes public dissent, questions state-corporate nexus and forces accountability.

Presentation short abstract

This study applies a critical coastal governance approach to an urban Mediterranean Marine Protected Area. Through mixed methodologies, we analyze how actors and diverse systems of knowledge engage with biodiversity issues and how Local Ecological Knowledge can support a more inclusive conservation.

Presentation long abstract

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are conventionally analysed through ecological and economic metrics, often overlooking the heterogeneous actors and knowledges that shape conservation in practice. In Mediterranean Sea contexts, where MPAs have largely emerged through top-down implementation of European and international directives, this framing can limit representation of marginalised actors and their contributions to governance under climate-driven social and ecological change, influencing the overall efficacy and perception of biodiversity conservation measures.

This study examines the urban Mediterranean MPA of “Capo Gallo - Isola delle Femmine” (Palermo, Sicily) through a Social-Ecological System Framework (SESF) to analyse how fishers, academia, tourism operators, management bodies, and the broader coastal community engage with conservation, bringing competing values and expertise. Using a mixed-method approach - focus groups, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, systematic literature review, and Social Network Analysis - we examine how biodiversity loss may shape patterns of participation in coastal management and knowledge inclusion, while also considering existing power imbalances.

Findings show how Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) can connect with the already-existing academic ecological knowledge and inform governance and future development of the MPA through a bottom-up approach. By highlighting these overlooked and emergent actors, the study promotes a critical coastal governance approach, recognizing conservation as a complex and transdisciplinary practice. Such an approach is essential to strengthen co-management and participatory processes and to broaden the recognition of legitimate conservation actors, supporting more inclusive and effective marine governance in Mediterranean contexts.

Presentation short abstract

Zoos are increasingly important conservation actors, but critical attention to their in-situ work remains limited. They heavily influence social, economic and land use dynamics in certain regions. Can zoos conduct such work justly, and is there a risk they shape landscapes to look like exhibits?

Presentation long abstract

During the 21st century large, mostly western ‘conservation zoos’ have been growing their influence across different strands of conservation practice. They are potentially the third largest category of funder of species conservation and have expanded beyond their traditional domains into direct in-situ conservation. The history of zoos as centres of education and entertainment, and as leaders in ex-situ research and breeding sets them apart from other conservation organisations. Despite this, critical attention to zoo in-situ conservation remains limited. This presentation covers an analysis of the in-situ work of nine leading conservation zoos, and an agenda for further research that is attentive to the politics and power relations inherent in their rise. Our analysis shows that zoo conservation is still focused on the management of endangered species, but they also now heavily influence social, economic and land use dynamics in certain areas of the world. We must consider whether zoos have the knowledge, expertise and experience to conduct people-centred work in ways understood to be equitable, just and sustainable in local contexts. It is also vital to understand how and why zoos decide to conserve particular species and areas. These choices could be motivated by conservation need, species charisma, historical contingency and links with ex-situ work. Finally, as organisations that both create simulacra of nature in exhibits that must appeal to western publics, and carry out in-situ conservation, conservation zoos risk being drawn into processes that shape landscapes to look more like zoo exhibits, rather than the other way around.