Wildness and Cross-Cultural Encounters

1. Wildness and Cross-Cultural Encounters The globalization of conservation and new political spaces Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

2. Argument • Extinction crisis: troubling biological trends • Extinction predicament: social, political, cultural barriers to conservation • Both together raise important Qs of justice • 6th great extinction = tremendous growth in PAs • 10% terrestrial earth, 1% oceans • Globalized conservation = new political spaces where global & local ideas of justice are in tension Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

3. Argument • How can we slow ext. crisis without uprooting people? • Can conservation become more politically legitimate? • Deliberative democracy and cross-cultural dialogue • Wilderness has been troubled, but wildness helpful • Wildness useful support for cross-cultural dialogue Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

4. Argument • Model of good conversation: equity, listening, reciprocity, respect, mutual understanding • Such encounters can lead to intercultural learning about different relationships to wild • Respecting this difference is fundamental • Tension b/w comp. ideas, metaphors = something new • Conversations can be generative and productive • Focus on wildness may even help wilderness projects Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

5. Location • Environmental Political Theory (EPT) • Conceptual criticism, normative analysis of power, nuanced understanding of political values, cross-cultural dialogue as the future • (Oxford Handbook of EPT, 2016) • Many in EPT think wilderness approach outdated • No. I think helps situate new questions raised by globalization of conservation • Critique does not imply dismissal • Focus on Qs of justice & political legitimacy Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

6. Location of Problem • Waves of wilderness politics • Romanticism • Legalization • Contestation • Deconstruction / Reconstruction (Vannini & Vannini, Wilderness, 2016) • What does de-construction entail? • What can re-construction look like? Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

7. Location of Problem • PA / wilderness challenged by (3) broad critiques • Empirical • Social-political • Intellectual Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

8. Empirical critiques of wilderness • Despite proliferation of PAs, biodiversity loss increases • Most biodiversity outside of PA bounds • Hotspot approach / “Awful symmetry” (E.O. Wilson) • Climate change and protected area approach • Will transform ecology of PAs, some species can’t adapt • What happens to Costa Rican cloud forest if no clouds? • Shifting baselines and “new normals” • How is ecological change meaningful if don’t have experiences of what existed before • Comfortable with biodepletion because ignorant? Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

9. Socio-political critiques • Protecting species or ecosystems, but not people • “Untrammeled” views of nature marginalizes human • Fortress/militarized conservation • Dispossession • Conservation refugees • Conservation as a social system / governance • BINGO politics lip service to stakeholder inclusion • Privileged forms ofknowledge • Scientific materialism dominant paradigm Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

10. Intellectual critiques • Cronon: Wilderness an idea, not description of nature • Soper: If N pristine, culture deformed • Luther Standing Bear (1933): Wilderness doesn’t exist • Plumwood: Wilderness as “virginal” problematic • Callicott: Androcentric, class based, eco-colonial • Guha: Inattentive to poor, Qs of material social justice • Schlosberg: wilderness politics passe Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

11. Concerns • As a lover of wilderness with a deep ethical concern for biodiversity crisis, imp’t to reckon with these critiques • But too many are absolutist and dismissive • Snyder: Denigration of “wilderness” and “nature” just in time for further exploitation by global economy! • Another danger: de-legitimizing conservation regimes • How can a focus on wildness help? Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

12. Wildness as key • Wilderness = idea, ideal, place, legal category • Wildness = quality, character, atmosphere • Wildness everywhere • Urban, exurban, pastoral, PAs, category 1B wilderness • Wildness a relationalquality, not place/thing • Expresses diverse human relationships to nature • Wildness = ungovernable/untamed/undomesticated • Unknowable: not subject to concept or programming • Antidote to disenchantment? Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

13. What wildness can do • Wilderness tied to N. Amer social history, not wildness • Wildness approach imp’t for habitat protection at different levels of human habitation • But also for people: wild within essential • For creativity, imagination, reciprocity with world • David Abram: non-human nature makes us human • Wildness better able to speak to Qs of justice in a shared framework: ecological, social, political • About sharing habitat for many inhabitants Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

14. Examples & Ideas • Academic advances: Socio-nature, nature-cultures, bio-cultures, techno-nature, relational ontology, hybridity, actor-network theory, heterogenous assemblage, interspecies politics, intedisciplinary work of many kinds • Mosaic of attitudes / values like complex ecosystems • Wildness like a “keystone species” • Take it out and systems unravel Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

15. Importance of cross-cultural dialogue • Some concepts don’t have linguistic equivalents: wilderness, biodiversity, wildness • Think that we have enough moral vocabulary to have cross-cultural conversations (Appiah) • Wilderness Babel project (Rachel Carson Center) • Really investigates ideas about nature & wildness • Take seriously beliefs, sentiments, imagination Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

16. Examples & Ideas • Connect conservation to sacred (species and sites) • Restrictions/taboos on human disturbance • Breeding grounds, water sources, salt licks, hot springs, mountains, sacred groves • Idea of numinous spiritual ecology • Especially in Asia, Africa, many indigenous traditions • Stewardship traditions in Christianity & Islam • TEK, folk tales, cosmovisions, dreaming sites • Thick with ways of relating to wild nature Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

17. Examples & Ideas • Political advances in governance: co-management, stakeholders, links b/w bio & cult diversity • CBD (Akwe Kwan Guidelines), Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Article 12), IUCN, UNESCO, World Heritage, Ramsar, Earth Charter, Alliance for Religion & Conservation, CCAs, ICDPs • Legal rights for nature: Ecuador, Boliv, NZ • Are these declarations enough? No, need widespread, on-going conversations by relevant actors Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

18. Examples & Ideas • Closer to home for me… • Rewilding: Wolf translocation in Idaho • Collaboration: conservation biology & Nez Pearce • Jinjas in Japan (shrines everywhere) • genius loci similar traditions • Boreal Forest Agrmt, Great Bear compromise (Canada) • Wildland politics as anti-capitalist tradition • Ecological nostalgia a potent source Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

19. Lessons & Conclusions • Don’t assume static cultural attitudes • Justice = equitable recognition and respect • Genuine encounters b/w people and possible • Encounter = curiosity, astonishment, disagreement, respect, mutual understanding • Don’t simply valorize the traditional and cultural • Put in conversation with scientific ecology • Intuition: more common ground than critics believe Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

20. Lessons & Conclusions • Wildness is not just a N. American construct • Has many meanings & frames of resonance • Not absence of people, but presence of h/nonH relationships (Plumwood) • Plenty of room for intelligent human intervention • And yet, while a Heideggerian “letting be” is a good ethic, it is not always wise • Wildness can be enhanced by human action • Caribou, salmon, wolves, loons, corals, keystone species Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference

21. Final conclusions • Anthropocene: our ideas and sentiments about wildness have become an evolutionary force • With the urgency of extinction, biological and cultural, take them seriously • Wapner: Sensitizing ourselves to wildness in “postnature” world = future of environmentalism • What does wildness mean to you? • How can it be a keystone concept that links Qs of ecological and social justice? Lambacher _ Just Sustainability conference