Climate Change, Shifting Nature, and Deliberation

Climate change leaves conservationists facing unprecedented uncertainty and indeterminacy that make it hard to measure conservation success. The novelty of future ecosystems generates axiological challenges that leave conservation without clear action guidance. In this paper, we argue that our best tool to navigate competing viewpoints is through deliberative democratic mechanisms that bring as many voices to the table as possible. We do this largely by comparing two different wolf reintroduction efforts and emphasizing the epistemic, practical, and political challenges presented by climate futures (which have no present analog) that ecologists and conservation biologists anticipate climate change will bring. Rather than trying to solve these issues through resolving disagreements about environmental value, we suggest that centering democracy around deliberation allows for a more pluralist and practical way to sort out our obligations regarding nature. Our view offers an ahistorical, adaptive, and holistic approach to conservation in a modern and dynamic world.