Presentation short abstract

This paper examines conservation’s postwar formation as a realm of capitalist moral authority, which sustained it through turn-of-the-millennium neoliberal transformations. It concludes that the moral economy underpinning this authority may now be its undoing under intensifying authoritarianism.

Presentation long abstract

Conservation’s moral significance for capitalist reproduction has been vividly evident through its neoliberal formations, in which conservationists exalt the virtues of “natural capital” for “saving the planet.” Political ecologists and human geographers have critically engaged conservation’s neoliberalization, but have not explained how and why conservation emerged as a prominent and durable realm of capitalist virtue-making. To address these questions, we resituate neoliberal conservation within longer ideological and class formations, with particular attention to the ascendance and consolidation of the professional-managerial class (PMC) and its early neoliberal critiques following WWII. We trace how modern conservation, as a key domain of PMC virtue, shifted after the 1970s from state-centric managerialism to market-centric technocracy, yet managed to endure as a prime source of capitalist moral authority. This resilience depended on the liberal aid and governance infrastructures that produced PMC expertise and moral standing, and that positioned conservation NGOs as key implementers of environmental responsibility. With the illiberal turn of ascendant authoritarianism, these institutional systems and their power have come increasingly under threat from actors openly hostile to both PMC virtue and environmental care. The 2025 dismantling of USAID exemplifies this shift, as a rapid contraction of a significant institutional source of PMC authority and a disruption to the global circuits through which conservation’s technocratic legitimacy has been maintained. In this emerging political terrain, the long-standing pattern of “failing forward” can no longer be taken for granted.