Iago Otero
Friday 29th June, 12.00 – 13.30, Can Masdéu (Barcelona)
The presentation is based on a paper developed by a working group on conservation ecology and degrowth.
It reviews the evidence on the links between economic growth and biodiversity loss, and it assesses the position of international biodiversity policies on economic growth. While showing the internal conflicts of biodiversity policies regarding their advocacy of economic growth, the paper asks what degrowth, a-growth and post-growth literatures can offer to biodiversity policy-making and research. It suggests seven policy proposals from this literature, proposes different implementation pathways at multiple scales, and discusses their relevance for global biodiversity conservation.
The lecture will address the expansion of degrowth ideas into the biodiversity conservation domain as a potentially key alliance of the movement. It will also reflect how degrowth ideas can be made relevant to a new (potentially hostile) audience, and some of the trade-offs implied by the selection of the publication outlet.
Compulsory readings
Martin, J.-L., Maris, V. & Simberloff, D. S. The need to respect nature and its limits challenges society and conservation science. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 113, 6105–6112 (2016).
Büscher, B. et al. Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications. Oryx51, 407–410 (2017).