Category: Risto Zetu

I hate the word “conservationist.”

Of all the words that I have been associated with for so much of my career, of all the weights to carry around, this one is a word I’ve been dragging around disdainfully for years.

For someone who cares deeply about inclusion, the “ist” at the end of the word immediately puts me – and all those who claim this word – on the other end of the spectrum. It claims that we are the only ones who truly know how to restore nature, rebuild ecosystems, right the wrongs of extractivism. On the one hand, it makes this some ‘cool’ secret, exclusive club to be part of. A true ivory tower. On the other, it is a scapegoat for every form of extractive and exploitative industry that has inflicted damage on the world.

They can point and say, “They will solve the climate crisis. They are the conservationists/ environmentalists/ naturalists.” And this is just what I think of the suffix!

Conservation itself is probably the most imprecise term to describe the mutual relationship of care, value, restoration, culture, management and love we have with the world around us. It is a cloak around a word that means if we give to nature, we gain, and her gains are ours too – we restore the forests, she gives us cleaner air; we plod the hooves of our cattle to loosen the soils of the savannah, she provides the dignity that comes with sustenance – good grass, good rain; we put a potted plant on our
window in the city, she sends us butterflies that bring us joy. The cycle continues.

But somehow, it has come to be associated with protection and preservation. We have created villains when no one was chasing us. “We must protect nature!” “We must save wildlife!” and suddenly there’s a bad guy, someone who doesn’t deserve to benefit from nature.

Then, there’s something about the framing around preservation that doesn’t account for the abundance we can create when we put our hands in the soil, in the water, and in our planning to restore. It sounds like we are mark-timing, only able to keep things stable at best, and at worst, that everything is declining. Everything’s going to shit. The whole thing is such a sad narrative.

I may never find a word precise enough to describe what I do. At least not in English. But I can make sure people know that what they do matters. We are all built to restore nature. From making that little green space in your neighbourhood greener and safer and a place of dignity and joy for your people (and for the trees that also deserve to live there); to pastoralists and farmers choosing better norms to keep our food and ecosystems thriving, to the people writing policies to curtail the greed of those who are actually seeking to destroy the planet – this is what we were built for.

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” I hope it stays in our memory that justice is our broken relationship with nature restored, and our humanity restored with it.