Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation

Examining the geographical dimensions of environmental management and conservation activities implemented on landscapes worldwide, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation creates a new framework and collects original case studies to explore recent developments in the interaction of humans and their environment.

Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation makes four important arguments about the recent coupling of conservation and globalization that is reshaping the place of nature in human-environmental change. First, it has led to an unprecedented number of spatial arrangements whose environmental management goals and prescribed activities vary along a spectrum from strict biodiversity protection to sustainable utilization involving agriculture, food production, and extractive activities. Conservation and globalization are also leading, by necessity, to new scales of management in these activities that rely on environmental science, thus shifting the spatial patterning of humans and the environment. This interaction results, as well, in the unprecedented importance of boundaries and borders; transnational border issues pose both opportunities and threats to global conservation proposed by organizations and institutions that are themselves international. Lastly, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation argues that the local level has been integral to globalization, while the regional level is often eclipsed at the peril of the successful implementation of conservation and management programs.

Bridging the gap between geography and life science, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation will appeal to a broad range of students of the environment, conservation planning; biodiversity management, and development and globalization studies.

Karl S. Zimmerer is professor and chair in the Department of Geography and a member of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.