News published: 19 April 2023

Many thanks to those of you who got in touch regarding my last blog on supporting conservation practitioners by keeping it simple. It is clear that frustrations with perceived bureaucracy and the many impediments that make it difficult to carry out conservation action are widespread in our community.

Some of these frustrations relate to the gap between policy and practice, and some relate to cumbersome institutional or government priorities and procedures. Many of us experience a combination of these factors – the common denominator is people. People’s needs and priorities always seem to come first – even among those of us who are self-proclaimed champions of the myriad of other species that constitute biodiversity.

It is easy to become cynical about the Convention on Biological Diversity and its targets, most (all?) of which we have failed to meet over the past 30 years. However, it is not the policy framework or the biodiversity targets that are the problem, it is the people tasked with delivering them. There are three central tenets to the Convention – biodiversity conservation, sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from biodiversity. Notice that two of the three are about people. While many argue that biodiversity cannot be conserved without people, I wonder how often our starting point is biodiversity? If the majority of the discussions and effort surrounding the Convention are about how people can better use biodiversity, it is not surprising perhaps that the conservation of biodiversity for its own sake gets lost. Furthermore, the Convention enshrines the idea of ownership of nature – nations have sovereignty over their biodiversity. The rationale here is that if people ‘own’ biodiversity, they will look after it better.

This isn’t what has happened.

I wonder if we might have more success if we were to consider ourselves as custodians of biodiversity, rather than its owners? Or symbionts? Could we consider good old-fashioned biodiversity protection rather than ‘use’ wherever possible – even where this is difficult to achieve. It’s surely fair to say that much of biodiversity is better off without our involvement or ‘management’ and, where compromise is necessary, let’s try to make sure that it isn’t organisms other than ourselves that are always expected to make that compromise.

These same skewed priorities exist in organisations that are dedicated to nature conservation. We spend a lot more time talking than doing, more effort on conservation promotion than practice, and any lone rangers who keep their eye on the conservation ball are likely to be misfits in the structures we have created for ourselves. How many people do you know who have retired, and become more productive and impactful? Why is this? Somewhere we are going wrong, and the clock is ticking. We can’t afford to continue to procrastinate, obfuscate, prevaricate and all the other ‘cates’ that prevent us from halting the loss of biodiversity.

What can we do as individuals?

Ask questions and demand answers from your leadership.

Challenge.

Apply for those leadership positions.

Get involved in setting strategy and policy.

Make sure that you measure impact not activity in your own work.

Make maximum use of your conservation action skills.

Change your job if you have to.

Most important of all, be passionate about biodiversity – ‘rage against the dying of the light’.

Believe me, there will always be plenty of people speaking for people.