ABSTRACT
Biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates, threatening the productivity and resilience of ecosystems that humans depend on. This introduces injustices to future generations, to current people and to non-human nature. Injustices to people include material impacts on their livelihoods, but also forms of discrimination that deny alternative ways of relating to nature. Current solutions to the biodiversity crisis are polarised between ‘people first’ approaches, which advocate protecting nature because of the benefits for humans, and ‘nature first’ approaches, which call for extending protected areas that serve the needs of non-human nature. Neither of these approaches will adequately safeguard the needs of just sustainability. Whilst existing conservation efforts should not be abandoned, we also need to embrace new models of conservation that recognise alternative worldviews. Two features of these models are likely to be a rejection of segregationist conservation in favour of co-habitation and a rejection of current attachments to economic growth and consumerism in favour of alternative ideas about living well.
