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Chapter 19 Making Conservation a Success Story
Discussion Questions
- Identify a tragedy of the commons environmental issue in your area. Looking back at Ostrom’s list of 10 essential ingredients for sustainable resource management, discuss those elements that you feel are lacking and therefore limiting the solution to your local tragedy of the commons.
- When environmental organizations work with or receive money from major resource-extractive or polluting companies, the companies often are suspected of greenwashing. What data might you collect to test whether greenwashing is a real concern? Do you personally believe environmental organizations should or should not accept philanthropic gifts from big corporations? Explain your position.
- Because young people today are increasingly urban and spend less time in nature, do you think experiences with virtual nature can inspire people to care about conservation and nature as they grow up?
Group Projects
- Visit the websites of three large conservation NGOs (such as Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund). At each website, search for discussions of human population growth. Summarize what each organization says about human population growth and potential solutions. Is the organization taking any actions related to human population growth? Finally, argue why it either is or is not appropriate for a conservation NGO to address human population growth, and state whether the organizations you examined are on the right track.
- Find an example of a partnership or collaboration between an environmental organization and a potentially polluting or damaging industry. What did the environmental organization receive from the industry? What did the industry receive from the environmental organization? Is there any evidence that the industry improved the sustainability of its practices as a result of engaging with the environmental organization?
- Search the Web to find and review the sustainability reports from five different corporations. Summarize the data they report regarding their sustainability, and identify gaps. What data should they include that they do not currently report?
- Identify a corporate sector (for example, transportation, apparel, food, energy, or mining) and then select five companies in that sector that issue sustainability reports. Review and evaluate their reports, and develop criteria for ranking those reports from good to poor. What criteria did you use? Do you think the companies with the good reports will do more to advance conservation? Based on your reading of the reports, what guidance would you offer to make the reports more useful and actionable?
Useful Websites
- Gapminder provides social, economic, and environmental data at local, national, and global levels. Users can make graphs or view illuminating videos to see how various indicators relate to sustainable development. http://www.gapminder.org
- Population Institute displays a population clock showing an up-to-the-minute tally of the world population. This organization promotes family planning and provides information to policymakers and the public regarding population. http://www.populationinstitute.org
- Population Reference Bureau provides a wealth of information, data, and charts regarding the human population, health, and environment. Data can be searched by nation or region. http://www.prb.org
Major Conservation NGOs
- Birdlife International: www.birdlife.org
- The Conservation Fund: www.conservationfund.org
- Conservation International: www.conservation.org
- Ducks Unlimited: www.ducks.org
- Environmental Defense Fund: www.edf.org
- Fauna and Flora International:www.fauna-flora.org
- National Audubon Society: www.audubon.org
- National Parks Conservation Association: www.npca.org
- National Wildlife Federation: www.nwf.org
- Natural Resources Defense Council: www.nrdc.org
- The Nature Conservancy: www.nature.org
- Sierra Club: www.sierraclub.org
- The Trust for Public Land: www.tpl.org
- The Wilderness Society: www.wilderness.org
- Wildlife Conservation Society: www.wcs.org
- World Wildlife Fund: www.panda.org
Suggested Readings for In-class Discussion
- Brook BW, Ellis EC, Perring MP, Mackay AW, Blomqvist L (2013) Does the terrestrial biosphere have planetary tipping points? Trends Ecol Evol 28: 396-401.
- DeFries RS, Ellis EC, Chapin III FS, Matson PA, Turner II BL, et al. (2012) Planetary opportunities: A social contract for global change science to contribute to a sustainable future. Bioscience 62: 603-606. http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/6/603.short (open access)
- Game ET, Meijaard E, Sheil D, McDonald-Madden E (2014) Conservation in a wicked complex world; challenges and solutions. Conserv Lett 7: 271-277.
- Hobbs RJ, Hallett LM, Ehrlich PR, Mooney HA (2011) Intervention ecology: Applying ecological science in the twenty-first century. Bioscience 61: 442-450. http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/6/442.short (open access)
- Knight AT (2013) Reframing the theory of hope in conservation science. Conserv Lett 6: 389-390.
- Kueffer C, Kaiser-Bunbury CN (2014) Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene. Front Ecol Environ 12: 131-137.
- Phillis CC, O’Regan SM, Green SJ, Bruce JE, Anderson SC, et al. (2013) Multiple pathways to conservation success. Conserv Lett 6: 98-106.
- Sodhi NS, Butler R, Laurance WF, Gibson L (2011) Conservation successes at micro-, meso-and macroscales. Trends Ecol Evol 26: 585-594.