Investigating the barriers to adopting a ‘human-in-nature’ view in Greek biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Recent decades have seen significant steps in the longstanding scientific, philosophical and political debates concerning the relationship between society and nature towards a more ‘human-in-nature’ view in biodiversity conservation. This progress has been reflected in both prominent scientific publications and several policy documents. However, the recent resurgence of ‘protection’ paradigms and the persistence of human practices undermining ecosystem functions on which human existence depends reveal that human and natural systems frequently continue to be treated separately in conservation practice and conventional scientific and policy discourses. Using insights from the field of political ecology and from research on social–ecological systems, and following a grounded theory research approach, we identify the critical barriers to the adoption of a ‘human-in-nature’ view in Greek biodiversity conservation. In particular, the analysis of 63 in-depth interviews with a variety of state and non-state stakeholders acting at several governance levels revealed as main barriers the lack of an integrative perspective on humans and ecosystems, scale mismatches between social and ecological systems, the underestimation of the heterogeneity of social groups, and the understanding of the reliance on the market as the main solution to biodiversity loss. We argue that steps towards ensuring environmental justice as well as socially inclusive and adaptive governance processes should embrace an understanding of both the dynamic nature of ecosystems and the power-laden character of the socio-economic systems involved in biodiversity conservation in order to create the preconditions for the emergence of social–ecological sustainability and ultimately for a ‘human-in-nature’ view.

Keywords:

• protected areas
• political ecology
• social–ecological systems
• power
• scale
• adaptive governance
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

This research project is co-financed by EU European Social Fund (75%) and the Greek Ministry of Development – GSRT (25%). Funding for this research has also been provided by the EU Large-Scale Integrating Project within FP7, SCALES (Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal and Ecological Scales; Grant 226 852). We are grateful to the many people and organizations which provided the information essential to our research. The language of this paper was improved vastly by constructive comments by Jonathan Smith. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.

Notes

1. See also Folke (2006) for an alternative definition of a ‘human-in-nature’ view.

2. Currently named as Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC).

3. Despite these perceptions, Greek governments have long avoided strict environmental controls for private producers on the grounds these would hinder development; the core Greek environmental law (1650/86) was 6 years in preparation, partly because of strong opposition from industrial interests (Pridham et al. 1995).

4. It is crucial to clarify that these new regulations have fundamentally changed conservation policy and governance in Greece but they have emerged after the research period of this paper and thus they are not being investigated here in detail.