Fixing biodiversity loss

Abstract

In the midst of the “sixth extinction” and declarations of the so-called Anthropocene, scientists and conservationists are debating the nature of planetary limits. They are also rethinking the very goal of nature conservation in a postnatural direction that is less oriented on saving pristine nature. To shed light on this contemporary debate, this paper looks back to examine three “circuits of power and knowledge” where biodiversity loss is constituted as an ecological crisis with humanity in its crosshairs and later as a more flexible problem of trade-offs. The paper contributes a grounded, empirical examination of the production of, and changing nature of “global biodiversity limits,” showing how they emerge through articulations between power laden and elite ecological-economic knowledge and frameworks, global biopolitical and ethical concerns, state-capital accumulative logics, and national security interests. Reaffirming a critical stance on limits and tracing a persistent ontology of scarcity in global biodiversity science and policy, the paper draws from the story of global biodiversity limits to inform the current discussion of the postnatural turn.