Conservation and 'Nature+'

摘要

This themed issue has been published to coincide with the IUCN World Conservation Congress. This international conference is being held in Jeju, in the Republic of Korea, from 6 to 15 September 2012. The World Conservation Congress convenes every four years, and draws together key public officials, NGOs, UN agencies and representatives from the business world in order to 'discuss, debate and decide solutions for the world's most pressing environment and development issues' (IUCN, 2012a). The theme of this year's Congress is Nature+. According to the IUCN, the idea of Nature+' captures the fundamental importance of nature and its inherent link to every aspect of our lives' (IUCN, 2012b: 2). In essence Nature+ reflects a late modern culmination of the more ambitious, pro-active, and expansionist form of nature conservation that was famously envisaged within Bill Adams's book Future Nature. Back in 1995, Adams described a brand of conservation that breached the narrow confines of nature reserves and national parks and influenced human action and decision-making in a range of landscapes (Adams, 1995). Nature+ conservation appears to go further than even Adams's vision, and positions nature conservation as a potential remedy for a range of local and global socio-environmental problems. Consequently, whether it be about ecosystems services, organic food production, or biomedical research, Nature+ is clearly a more confident brand of nature conservation, which no longer seeks justification in narrow preservationist terms, but instead suggests that there are nature-based solutions to the interconnected problems of climate change, food production and economic development (IUCN, 2012b: 2).