Dear all, Please see attached a CfP for the POLLEN24 conference 10-12 june 2024, organized by Marco Immovilli and myself. We welcome submissions! Best, Bram
Biodiversity conservation and the value turn Panel proposal and CfP for POLLEN 2024: The 5th Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network, 10-12 June 2024, https://pollen2024.com/ | @PolEcoNet Organised by: Marco Immovilli and Bram Büscher (Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University) Abstract: Over the last decade, debates around values of nature have gained great traction in the field of conservation. Besides important work from political ecology (Allen, 2018; Büscher & Fletcher, 2020; James & Broome, 2023), this received impetus through the work of the 2022 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessment of the diverse ways people value nature. In this assessment, IPBES (2022) criticizes the fetishization of economic values of nature as one of the structural causes of the current global environmental predicament. In response, IPBES and others (Pascual, 2023) have suggested an agenda of pluralism and diversity of values to create space for diverse ways of giving value to nature to co/exist. This position has created room among mainstream institutions to think of post-growth and post-capitalist pathways for biodiversity conservation (leading the IPBES assessment to list degrowth as one possible transformative trajectory for the first time). These developments present a salient opportunity for political ecologists to contribute to these debates. We see two avenues, in particular, that deserve urgent attention. The first is to build on these development to further push a deeper understanding and more practical application of post-growth and alternative values of nature. The second is to discuss the limits of these approaches and how they are rolled out in more mainstream debates. Most importantly, these debates fail to incorporate critical discussions of value, especially those that understand value as a central component of capitalism and that are critical of a ‘diversity of values agenda’ that eschews capital’s ultimate drive towards the valorisation of value. A critical take on value can fill these gaps and push discussions on radical transformations forward. In this panel, we aim to bridge the gap between critical thought and mainstream debates on biodiversity conservation and value. We hope to do so by collecting contributions that critically reflect on the concept of diversity of values of nature (and more generally on the idea of diversity within capitalism) and on different ways value can be used to reflect on the relation between capitalism and the protection of nature. We believe that new understandings of value can enlighten us on the functioning of biodiversity conservation within late capitalism. Hence we also welcome contributions that use value as an emancipatory concept to study alternative ways of living with nature. We believe that calls for post-growth and post-capitalist ways of living with nature could profit from an engagement with value as a way to explore their modes of operation, organization and reproduction. In sum, we welcome contributions that, among others, touch upon the following topics: * Critical histories of value theories and approaches within biodiversity conservation; * Critical reflections on the diversity of values of nature agenda within biodiversity conservation; * Reflections on new interlinkages between conservation, capitalism and value; * Theoretical and empirical work using value to explore: a) alternative ways of living with nature, b) struggles and conflicts within conservation; * General reflections on current debates on value and nature to think about protection and living with nature. Please submit your paper proposal no later than 12th December 2023. We will let you know of acceptance by the 14th December. Final submission to the conference organizers is on 15th December. Please send a 250-300 word proposal, with title, contact information, and three keywords as a Word attachment to marco.immovi...@wur.nl<mailto:marco.immovi...@wur.nl>. References Allen, K. (2018). Why exchange values are not environmental values: Explaining the problem with neoliberal conservation. Conservation and Society, 16(3), 243-256. Büscher, B., & Fletcher, R. (2020). The conservation revolution: radical ideas for saving nature beyond the Anthropocene. Verso Books. IPBES (2022). Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6522522 James, A., & Broome, N. P. (2023). A Fine Balance? Value-relations, Post-capitalism and Forest Conservation—A Case from India. Conservation and Society, 21(3), 188-199. Pascual, U., Adams, W. M., Díaz, S., Lele, S., Mace, G. M., & Turnhout, E. (2021). Biodiversity and the challenge of pluralism. Nature Sustainability, 4(7), 567-572. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gep-ed+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/DB9PR01MB10218DA1CE8257348C7E9932DEC82A%40DB9PR01MB10218.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com.
