Ashish Kothari’s new article “Half-Earth or Whole-Earth? Green or transformative recovery? Where are the voices from the Global South?” was published in Oryx magazine. Read the first few paragraphs below and the full article here.
A debate is swirling around various bold proposals to protect biodiversity. One of these proposals arose in part from E.O. Wilson’s (2016) book Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. The essence of the idea is summarized by the Half-Earth Project (2021), which ‘…is working to conserve half the land and sea to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, including ourselves’. Critics have argued the idea is fraught with implications for human rights, likely to be ineffective and that—contrary to the proposal—transformations in economic activity across the Earth are needed to bring us within ecological limits (Büscher et al., 2017).
In parallel to this and related ideas (e.g. CBD, 2020), new approaches to development in a post COVID-19 world are being proposed, some of which—such as nature-based solutions—are attracting mainstream attention. The basic tenets, of acting in accordance with the principles and flows of nature, with sustainable management and use of nature for tackling socio-environmental challenges, are unexceptionable. But this approach too ignores the power and rights dimensions of such solutions, and lends itself to another kind of greenwash, in which corporations and governments continue their destructive activities while paying or pressurizing others to offset them (Global Forest Coalition, 2020a).
But what I find of greatest concern in all these proposals and approaches is their origin in the Global North. Most of the proponents, and even many of their critics, are based in institutions in northern or western countries, or in the rich and powerful sections of the south. Noticeably missing or weakly represented are voices from the Global South (e.g. Agrawal, 2020), including Indigenous people or other local communities who live amidst or use the areas containing most biodiversity.
