PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Environment, Politics and Society
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2025.1580708
This article is part of the Research TopicConservation DialoguesView all 12 articles
Word Count: 9,805 (including refs). Decolonizing Conservation, A Global Conversation: Views from Turtle Island, Tanzania, and Thailand Authors: Saw John Bright
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
- 2Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), Chiang Mai, Thailand
- 3University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- 4Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT), Arusha, Tanzania
- 5University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
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What does it mean to decolonize conservation? This question was posed to a group of scholars and activists working in different places around the world –the US, Canada, Tanzania, and Thailand. This article is an edited transcript of the conversation that ensued. The goal of this paper is to keep that conversation alive and continue to add nuance and curiosity to the question as it unfolds in similar and different places around the world. A key feature of continuing important dialogues such as this one, is to resist the temptation to offer definitive definitions of what it would take to decolonize conservation but rather seek out greater understanding of what it might look like in a variety of places. Amongst deepening calls for greater Indigenous inclusion as states seek to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework, it is vital we keep questions of what constitutes decolonized conservation top of mind.
Keywords: conservation, indigenous peoples, Decolonization, political ecology, global biodiversity framework
Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 15 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Goldman, Bright, Low, Ole Parmelo, Carroll and Roth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mara J. Goldman, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.