ABSTRACT
In times of great change, diversity and experimentation are the ingredients of adaptation. Yet conservation, like the hegemonic civilizations of ancient China and Arabia (Landes, 1998), is not well structured to adapt. In placing biodiversity ahead of humans, and making conservation a moral issue more than an economic one, ‘conservation’ is in danger of prioritizing the desires of an urbanized techno-elite. This may have worked in colonial or autocratic societies, but in an age of increasing political inclusion is unlikely to succeed. Democracy and imposed conservation simply do not go together.
