Transformative Politics of Nature: Overcoming Barriers to Conservation in Canada

Transformative Politics of Nature highlights the most significant barriers to conservation in Canada and discusses strategies to confront and overcome them. Featuring contributions from academics as well as practitioners, the volume brings together the perspectives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on land and wildlife conservation, in a way that honours and respects all peoples and nature.

Contributors provide insights that enhance understanding of key barriers, important actors, and strategies for shaping policy at multiple levels of government across Canada. The chapters engage academics, environmental conservation organizations, and Indigenous communities in dialogues and explorations of the politics of wildlife conservation. They address broad and interrelated themes, organized into three parts: barriers to conservation, transformation through reconciliation, and transformation through policy and governance.

Taken together, the essays demonstrate the need for increased social-political awareness of biodiversity and conservation in Canada, enhanced wildlife conservation collaborative networks, and increased scholarly attention to the principles, policies, and practices of maintaining and restoring nature for the benefit of all peoples, species, and ecologies. Transformative Politics of Nature presents a vision of profound change in the way humans relate to each other and with the natural world.

Andrea Olive is a professor in the Department of Geography, Geomatics, and Environment and the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
Chance Finegan was most recently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Karen F. Beazley is a professor emeritus in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University.