Social Justice, Conservation and Complexity with Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland

Our guest this week is Professor Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland who is the Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford. She leads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, founded the Conservation Optimism organization and co-founded the Saiga Conservation Alliance. In June 2024 she published a perspectives piece entitled 

Now is the time for conservationists to stand up for social justice

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002657

In this podcast we discuss some of the questions she raises in that piece and a range of issues related to the complexities inherent within conservation and how to stay optimistic in the face of them. You can join the Conservation Optimism Summit by visiting this link: https://summit24.wpenginepowered.com/

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Transcript

Stephen Thomas: 0:05

Music. Welcome to the nature recovery podcast. We're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline, and we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. Hello and welcome to the nature recovery podcast with me. Stephen Thomas, I'm Science and heads up the conservation optimism initiative. She's particularly known for a work in ecology and conservation of the Saiga antelope, and she's written a perspectives piece called now is the time for conservationists to stand up for social justice, which was an amazing piece, very Okay, thank you so much for your time, EJ, and thank you for your amazing perspectives, piece that I found really interesting, and now is the time for conservationists to stand up for social justice. So just to begin, because those terms are complicated for people like me, can you explain what is

EJ Milner Gulland: 1:57

Social justice is where people actually have the rights that are enshrined in law. And that sounds obvious, and everybody should have their rights. But if you think about indigenous people and local communities, particularly who are living in areas of high biodiversity, often

Stephen Thomas: 2:32

Okay, thanks, yeah, and I think your your piece for me, definitely, I find it very accessible, and it really highlighted, actually, to me, the challenge with fairness and nature recovery. You know, we need nature recovery, but actually, what is a fair nature recovery? And critically, have been happening from carbon going into nature recovery, about how we do conservation?

EJ Milner Gulland: 3:16

I think the main thing is that we genuinely need to have this as something that comes from local people. So we come in with our money and our ideas about what nature recovery should look like, and we then go and try to get free prior informed consent from local people. But for people's views about how they see their futures, and that means that hard choices and compromises have to be made. And I think as people who have power, and we've lived with power for our entire lives, coming from this background, very hard to give that up. And so, for example, if you're coming the. From a global level. And so we might say, Okay, this area is critically important for nature at a global, planetary level, and is pretty unique, whereas people who are coming from the local level will have a different view about its uniqueness, and may not see that global perspective. So there kind of back seat facilitatory role to support indigenous and local communities, to fight back against alienation and destruction of their lands. So they they're very much providing that finance and the global platform for those people, but it's those people who are taking the decision about where

Stephen Thomas: 6:05

Yeah, thank you. Think you've almost answered the next question I want to ask, which is something I've always found curious about this sort of global nature finance gap, which currently stands at 700 billion. I think, which I sort of see is that's the estimate for turning the targets with this, this global system where the power is in the hands of fewer. You know, because wealth is in the hands of the few, how do you balance those tensions? Of like, needing finance? It's that. It's global. Finance is big. That's where the money is. But then you've also indicated actually, that

EJ Milner Gulland: 7:02

Yeah. And I think, you know, maybe there's three different categories of areas requiring finance. And, of course, the point that we all realize is that money isn't enough. Money isn't necessary, but not sufficient. And the three different areas are, you know, maybe the easiest one be theirs, that are currently under commercial exploitation, or whatever. So so it's to support and enable stewardship, and that sits quite comfortably with ethical frameworks. The next one is restoration on lands that are currently degraded. And there, I think there's a really good like Sub Saharan Africa, where governments are handing out leases to sovereign wealth funds or big international finance to manage this for carbon. Carbon is a commodity, and this is really dangerous, and it means that we're kind of really narrowing down opportunity later on. Yeah, so trying to commercial hunters are not coming in and decimating our global and local heritage. So there is a need for proper management, enforcement, governance, institutions for our protected sites that can be done in a socially just way, and it can be done in a exclusionary way. And obviously the exclusion

Stephen Thomas: 9:50

Okay, yeah, thank you. That's that really framed some of the challenges. And I love the sort of the stewardship point as well. You know, we, I think, with a lot of financing. Kind of, we're wanting something out of it for our money. And actually, there's a lot of just enabling consumption, and those with power and privilege need to give some of it up. And I think I feel personally, broadly optimistic about society coming together to predict areas of land, because that seems less controversial sometimes, depending on how the day's going, I feel less optimistic about society or something like that, but, but we are still quite individualistic, and I don't know if that goes into a deeper type of change that we need, or if it is something that is even within the realms of conservation to tackle or look At.

EJ Milner Gulland: 11:18

Yeah, it's really difficult, isn't it? I guess there is room for optimism, I would say, and it comes from a number of sources. So I guess business and government, I would say, are starting to recognize the need for transformational change just because of the risks and dependencies in society. And I guess, I guess the right to consume thing is interesting, isn't it, because if those of us who have lived more than a couple of decades realize that we're moving very fast, and what is seen as normal becomes normalized very, very quickly, even though it wasn't normal 1015, 20 bubble. We all live in our separate bubbles. But I don't think that people necessarily would see material consumption as a right. What they see as a right is the ability to live a good life, you know, and the ability to live a good life comes from a lot of different things. And I wonder if we are

Stephen Thomas: 13:45

yeah. So I would love chatting to you, because you make complex things make sense to me. So thank you for that. So I'm going to ask you a very long rambling question about complexity. So sometimes I just think, Wow, this all seems really, really complicated. So I used to have a thinking, well, actually, where does the bird feed come from? And actually, I do, actually, I don't know. Didn't we check where it went? It was probably manufactured. What was the farming of the seed? Was that done in a good way? And then it was processed, put in a thing. It's like, well, should you feed birds or not? Now this isn't a question about bird feeders. That's just my inner dialog about complexity of some of these issues, and that's a very, very small issue in my garden conservation. I. Look at it sometimes, and it's, I'm amazed at all the work that happens in conservation. Your funding runs out at a certain date, and you're expected to double the population of butterflies. And there's a lot of pressure to do that. And so with all that, it sounds hard and complicated, and I just wonder how we grapple with this complexity of also introducing socially just nature more harm than good in the long run. About, you know, perpetrating systems that may not be great in the long term for humans and natures and interactions. So I guess the the broad end of this ramble is like, how do you cope with this complexity without making the framework so complicated

EJ Milner Gulland: 16:34

Okay, that's multifaceted. I think I'm going to answer three questions. Okay, the first one is the socially just conservation one, which is the kind of fundamental one. And I think the thing to say about that is that it is complex, and it's already complex, and at the moment, the aquacultural basket weaving, or bees, or whatever it happens to be, whatever their top plan is, and they routinely fail. Now, some work that we did in the jar reserve, and Cameroon was just trying to flip it, and so you're doing you're still coming in and doing the same kind of thing, but you're thinking about it, and then ask them. Then stuff emerges. So for example, around the jar reserve the alternative proteins that the women were meant to raise and then sell in the market. It transpired that they were getting informal fines from the Eco guards when they were taking them to market, and So I don't think it actually would you increase complexity? I think it reduces complexity to think in that way. You just have to think in a different way. So that's one answer. The second answer I'm going to give is about conservation optimism. So, you know, we founded this movement called successes. We might not be winning the war yet, but we're winning battles. So let's speak about those battles, and that helps people hopefully to move forward and to understand the other thing is understanding our ecological grief, understanding our feelings of complexity and hopelessness. Is moving have no idea how I'm supposed to act in this world where everything I do is complex. First thing is to live with your hypocrisy. We're all hypocrites. None of us perfect. We're all consuming, you know. And that's okay, you know. And the second thing is, with my bird feeder, I've I don't use it all I also have wild areas in my garden. These are things that will be good for the other birds that I don't see on the bird feeder, and that's fine. So I think it's just give yourself a break.

Stephen Thomas: 21:13

Thank you. That's amazing, and I should highlight as well the conservation optimism is having a big festival in September. Yes, so 16 to the 18th tickets are still available. We'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you for that. Okay, I'll finish up with just two slightly quicker

EJ Milner Gulland: 21:44

I think it's spot on. I mean, it focuses on life, on earth, nature, but it also really highlights that the fact that humans and nature are not separate, and we need to, we need to fix both sides.

Stephen Thomas: 21:58

Excellent. Thank you. And your final question, I ask everybody if there was an ecosystem or a natural space or a natural place that you could go and spend some time to, you know, two weeks, one week, wherever you want. You don't have to worry about the flights, the carbon, it's all

EJ Milner Gulland: 22:16

I was born on the South Downs. It's still my home. And I guess if there was one place on Earth, if I could only ever go to one place ever again, I would go there. I would go in the kind of late spring when you have the orchids. And I would walk on the top of the downs and just

Stephen Thomas: 22:41

I'm transported already. Thank you so much for your time. I leave this educated, wiser with less worries, with less complexity and with more options. So thank you so much. I told you she was smart and amazing and kind, so I really enjoyed interviewing her. If you've got any ideas forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you can, please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone you know you never know. You might get them interested in the wonderful field of nature

Unknown: 24:06

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