Paper short abstract:

This paper considers what an “ethic of care” for human and non-human beings might mean for conservation practice. Insights from the critique of mainstream global conservation and institutional ethnography provide vital points of departure for building decolonizing, earth-caring institutions.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I consider what an “ethic of care” for human and non-human beings might mean for conservation practice. To do this, I draw from a robust critique of mainstream global conservation, along with emerging decolonial scholarship, to consider what matters for building earth-caring pathways and institutions. I begin by drawing from my long-term ethnographic field work, which examines the ideas and practices of big conservation organisations or BINGOs. I find that these organisations produce and enact “conservation solutions” that are technical, reductionist and economistic. Furthermore, the promise of their global policy fixes flies in the face of local contexts, which are replete with intricate socio-natures and uncertainty. By understanding what is wrong with global conservation in this way - namely its technical hubris and wilful ignorance in the face of complexity - I argue that we can identify points of departure or new values for re-building conservation practice. In other words, by recognising mainstream conservation as a form of institutional violence, we are called upon to find new practices that are liberating, non-violent and caring. The ethic of care for human and non-human kin is foundational in indigenous ontologies, and it prompts vast possibilities for ethical practice, if listening and humility in relation to our own place-of-dwelling and action is allowed. Deborah Bird Rose calls this “world-making”, a disposition in which we must ask: “Are self and others flourishing? Are the possibilities for life enhanced?” (2011:12). These questions suggest a practical ethics for earth-caring institutions.