Environmental Values

This article explores the meaning of inclusive participation in global conservation decision-making processes. It draws on data collected in collaborative ethnographic research of the latest World Conservation Congress (WCC) held in 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. We argue that despite a discernible shift towards the incorporation of indigenous rights and indigenous peoples’ representatives within the conservation equation, many challenges to full participation still exist for both indigenous peoples and other local resource users who may be affected by conservation governance decisions. Several conditions exist at a global scale that limit democratic participation, including the unequal power relations between indigenous peoples and the global north, which limits the space for indigenous inclusion, the democratic deliberation that is often treated as a checkbox item, the limited resources to facilitate broad inclusion (in terms of both monetary and cultural capital), and the political challenges of legitimacy for some at more local scales, such as the concern of who represents whom at the global scale. We recognise effort has been given to expanded participation in global conservation governance, but inclusive and deliberative participation is still limited within IUCN and among other conservation NGOs.

This study examines the multiple dimensions of the agdal system, a traditional Berber form of environmental management that regulates access to communal natural resources so as to allow the regeneration of natural resources. In fact, this ingenious system of agro-pastoral land rotation is ultimately beneficial for the conservation of the bio-physical environment, the performance of the present-day local economy and the maintenance of prevailing social cohesion and cultural coherence. Hence, agdals constitute a key element for the reinforcement of the sustainability of existing agro-pastoral societies and ecosystems, but need to be better understood in order to explore necessary adaptations in the changing world of today.

Public recognition of the fragility of the natural systems on which present and future generations depend has prompted calls for the practice of environmental stewardship – calls widely criticised in the environmental ethics literature. Some argue that stewardship's historical associations entail that it is inherently sexist, speciesist and/or anthropocentric. Others argue that absent belief in a creator to appoint us as stewards and hold us accountable, talk of ‘environmental stewardship’ is empty. I review the concept's recent evolution and provide a tentative definition. I argue that so defined, it is not vulnerable to standard criticisms, but is instead a promising way of construing morally decent conduct towards the environment.

Wild horses are becoming dependent on transitional environments between domesticity and wildness. In Dutch new nature areas they are learning to perform roles as ecological surrogates for their extinct ancestors. In the U.S. wild horses are ‘feral’ and exist in numbers deemed to be in excess of the carrying capacity of semi-arid public range lands. The federal government is removing and relocating thousands to long-term holding pastures. The capabilities approach of Nussbaum (2006) allows us to evaluate this transitional environment against a threshold of opportunities to exercise capabilities judged to be central to their flourishing as wild horses.

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services: (1) global justice between different people of the present generation (‘intragenerational justice'); (2) justice between people of different generations (‘intergenerational justice'). Three hypotheses about their relationship – independency, facilitation and rivalry – are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity and quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions.

We develop the general outlines of an evolutionary biodiversity policy that is consistent with the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce and the institutional economics of John R. Commons. Our model is applied to recent experiences with biodiversity policy in Finland, especially a local policy initiative: Natural Values Trading (2003–2007). The purpose of this experiment was to explore how a voluntary, fixed-term, payment- and incentive-based scheme for biodiversity protection might perform. As a result of the experiment, the principles of the scheme have become a formalised part of Finnish forest biodiversity law and policy. In this paper we analyse the evolution of this particular institutional arrangement by applying Peircean semiosis and the negotiational psychology of Commons. A central component of our approach will be to explicate the role and significance of sign processes in: (1) how and why the need for new policy instruments emerges; (2) how those policies are developed, designed and tested; and (3) how decisions about those new instruments are made. We urge that the sign process should play a greater role in how scholars understand the evolution of biodiversity policy. Semiosis is ‘good to think with’.