A New Conservation Politics: Power, Organization Building and Effectiveness

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Despite many successes in the field of conservation, species extinction rates continue to climb and wild areas and habitats continue to be lost. Many look to more (or better) biology and ecology to solve the problem but the obstacles are not just scientific but political. To stop the 6th great extinction the conservation movement must become much stronger, more tenacious, and more effective. By learning from its own history and especially from the movements that abolished slavery, brought down apartheid, changed gender relations, and expanded democratic rights, conservationists can become more successful.

This book brings together in one place and in a highly usable format the lessons of those movements culled from practitioners and academic analysts.

"Protecting Earth's rich web of life, and our only known living companions in the universe, depends upon people caring enough to act. This book shows conservationists how to evoke the caring and action necessary to change policy and ultimately society." Paul R Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment

� This timely book by David Johns explains why facts alone don t motivate and mobilize people to care for the natural world. Even better, Johns spells out what will work, based on a frank and informed assessment of human nature applied to social and political movements. If you would rather see change than be right, this readable and authoritative guide should be your bible. � Michael Soulé, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

�For me, this is a truly fascinating book. I spend much of my time writing--trying to write the stories we need to tell--and the rest of it helping run national and global mobilizations on climate change (Step It Up and now 350.org). I think David Johns has done a tremendous job of linking together insights about useful rhetoric and very practical notions about organizing. If you're trying to save a river, a forest, or a planet you need to read this book.” Bill McKibben, Scholar-in-Residence, Middlebury College

A New Conservation Politics: Power, Organization Building and Effectiveness Review

This is a very very important book. In it, the author attempts to wake up those in the conservation movement to a problem they often prefer to ignore. The cold hard truth is that the conservation movement is failing. It's not that no one knows we are losing places and species faster than we can document the loss. Nor is the problem that no one cares. Rather, the problem is we in the movement are remarkably ineffective at harnessing this knowledge and concern.

No social movement has ever had a broader global support base than the environmental movement. And it is difficult to think of a social movement that can lay stronger claim to the moral high ground. And no social movement in all human history, has had anywhere near the amount of reliable objective knowledge supporting its concerns and prescriptions. And yet, lets be clear here, the conservation movement is getting its collective ass kicked every day.

Each day our species, homo sapiens, is causing the extinction of more and more of Earth's other species, further undermining the basic ecological integrity of the planet, and multiplying the number of potentially catastrophic threats to our continued existence. We in the movement often like to make ourselves feel superior by pointing out the delusional nature of our opponent's beliefs. David Johns stands out among conservationists by asking us to take a look at our own delusions. We repeat the same behaviors over and over, telling ourselves we are making a significant difference, and that if we just keep doing more of the same, eventually we will succeed, because our cause is so important. But the fact is, there is little evidence to support this optimistic assertion. It's time we wake up to the reality, that if we don't get a lot better, a lot faster, at accomplishing our agenda, the future of planet Earth is going to be barren, sad and a lot more dangerous.

However, this is only half of David Johns' message. Johns is a realist, but he is no doomsdayer. Rather he points out that there is another group of human beings who already possess much of the understanding we need to improve our odds of success. Ironically, while we have been ignoring this group and their knowledge, corporations are using this knowledge to pursue the truly pathological goal of unlimited economic growth. This knowledge is the science of human nature and social change. The fact that this strategy is not self evident to everyone in the conservation movement is testimony to our own pathology. Our problem is, like all serious problems, a political problem, and we are bad at politics. Politics means changing both minds and social structures, without one the other is powerless.

The book is organized into sections. My favorite is Part 1 "We have met the enemy and they are both us and them." Johns acknowledges that the conservation movement has enemies who fight against our goals; sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of greed, and sometimes because they have legitimate conflicting interests. He argues that our failures and successes must be understood in terms of a more realistic and scientifically informed understanding of human nature and social change, rather than a simple us against them attitude or simplistic ideological fantasies. Ultimately, Johns' message is that it is our failure to understand human nature that is threatening the rest of nature. He argues that we must understand that our capacity for conflict, cooperation, rationality and compassion are functions of an inherited human nature that expresses itself in the struggle for not just food water, sex, and physical comfort, but also in the struggle for control of the symbolic culture that makes complex social order possible in the first place.

In Part 2, "Conservation as is life depended on it," Johns argues that while we must build the conservation movement on a more accurate understanding of human nature and social change, only by developing a lot more clarity about what we actually want the world to be like, is it possible to articulate achievable goals. Once we have clear goals, we need to acquire the tools required to achieve these goals. Without the right tools, no amount of knowledge or concern about a problem will lead to solving that problem. In the last two sections of the book, Johns talks about "forging the hammer" and "the care and maintenance of the hammer," by which he means using what we know about human nature and social change to build the tools of power that the conservation movement must master if it hopes to succeed. I particularly like the mirror he holds up to NGOs. Anyone who has ever worked in a conservation or environmental organization and does not recognize the many systematic failures of power he outlines is simply not paying attention. Johns argues that NGOs are often organized around making its members feel good about what they are trying to do, rather than actually measuring and evaluating their own efficacy. That is to say, they do a lot of what they are comfortable doing, rather than what their mission requires they do. Johns doesn't tell us how to save the planet, but he makes a strong case that those in the conservation movement need to start paying close attention to, partnering with, and employing psychological and social scientists; if we are to have any hope of making our dream come true.

Michael E. Christopher, Psy.D., Ph.D.

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