What’s Next for Nature: Perspectives on Political Ecology

Several essays share a powerful premise: conservation is a human decision, and therefore inherently a democratic act. Jonathan Peterson writes that “conservation is our human capacity to navigate [the] complex decision space” about our desired relationship with nature not only through expertise, but through inclusive, collaborative governance rooted in trust. Lynn Scarlett insightfully describes collaborative conservation as cultivating the “habits of mind” essential to democracy: civil discourse, accountability, inclusivity, and shared responsibility. For both authors, the practice of landscape-scale stewardship can function as a forge for renewing democratic norms and capacities, particularly in an era when those norms are fraying at national and global levels.

The radical idea that nature itself is a subject, not an object—voiced with lyrical force by Emily Johnston in her essay Sea Change—challenges us to expand democracy beyond the human. “Every life on Earth, no matter how simple,” she writes, “has awareness and desires and trajectory: this, not that.” This perspective lends strength to efforts that seek to give ecosystems a voice in decision-making, whether through legal innovations like rights of nature, or institutional reforms like ministries for future generations and the more-than-human world. Johnston’s argument is both ethical and structural: without a thriving biosphere, there can be no thriving democracy. Absent the material basis of life—clean air, water, food, stability—human society can neither function nor persist.

Other essays focus on the divides that democracy must bridge if it is to endure and serve the common good, especially between urban and rural communities, or among neighboring nations. In Bridging the Great Divide, Dr. Rick Knight and Erik Glenn discuss how food, open space, and shared land stewardship can reconnect people across the partisan and geographic gulfs of the American West. Their embrace of the “Radical Center”—where pragmatic collaboration replaces ideological purity—offers a compelling model for rebuilding civic trust through ecological common cause. Similarly, the international perspective offered in True Connection Among Friends by Dr. Rodrigo Medellin reveals that transboundary conservation efforts—especially for migratory species—depend on democratic governance marked by transparency, inclusivity, and accountability. Where democratic erosion takes hold, ecosystems unravel. Where civic engagement and respect for Indigenous rights flourish, biodiversity has a chance.

Most fundamentally, these essays argue that the ecological and democratic crises of our time are not technical failures, but failures of governance, culture, and imagination. As Gus Speth writes, “American democracy… is a major cause of the climate crisis,” and must be transformed into a “climate-capable democracy” that puts future generations, the planet, and public interest above short-term profits and GDP growth. His critique is structural, but his call is clear: we must change the system itself—not just the policies—to meet the scale of the environmental emergency.

Together, these six essays reject despair and embrace possibility. They show that in caring for landscapes, watersheds, and migratory corridors, we can also rebuild the relationships, norms, and institutions that make democracy meaningful. Conservation, at its core, must not only be about saving species or sequestering carbon but about learning how to live together, human and more-than-human, in ways that engender reciprocity, sustainability, and dignity.