This edited volume aims to showcase and challenge some of the latest engagements between critical social science and conservation NGOs. It starts with an insightful introduction, which includes challenges both to critical social scientists (e.g. to move beyond treatment of conservation NGOs as monolithic entities) and conservation professionals (e.g. to engage more with informed criticism that can reveal more than a comfortable consensus). The bulk of the book is then given to a series of chapters that focus on a range of studies concerning different scales and aspects of Conservation NGO practice. This first section is followed by a shorter Discussion Forum section with responses to the book by seven conservation thinkers and practitioners.
Larsen's second chapter is particularly useful in tracking the project economy and the impact that has on what NGOs are, what they do and how they behave. The chapter also serves to show how the use of mischievous language can undermine attempts at building trust or willingness to collaborate from members of the NGO community, as made clear by Wilkie and Cleary in the Forum section of the book.
Subsequent chapters give significant attention to Conservation NGOs’ engagements with the private sector, markets and neoliberalism, with contributions concerning the increasing influence of corporate interests at the world conservation congress (Chapter 4); the effectiveness of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil voluntary standards (Chapter 5); the consistency of pro-market perspectives held by conservation professionals (Chapter 6); the rationale used by conservation organisations in their engagement with markets (Chapter 7); and the validity of conservation NGOs in REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) project development (Chapter 8).
The final chapter in the main section of the book is a reprint of an article originally published in Oryx (2011) by Kent Redford in which he makes the case for open-handed collaboration with conservationists and social scientists—with a focus on anthropology, political science and geography—to create a resilient practice that conserves the world's biodiversity while respecting and empowering people.
The discussion provided in the Forum section of the book gives direct, concise and considered responses to the main chapters of the book. David Cleary's chapter in particular stands out, in which he questions the possibility of substantive dialogue between conservation practitioners and the academy given the conceptual frameworks adopted by the book's authors. Cleary argues that theses frameworks foreclose a real exchange of views, exclude centrally important types of information and create fundamental misunderstandings of how conservation organisations work.
The introduction of the book recognizes this discontent with critical literature and points out that the difficulties of meaningful engagement persist more than a decade after they were raised by Brosius in 2006. In essence the majority of the book's chapters and the proceeding discussion sections serve to showcase such ongoing discontent. The lack of more fertile co-productive work shows the challenges of achieving trust, understanding the role of criticism and the acceptance that transdisciplinary collaboration cannot (and should not) be comfortable all of the time.
Beyond the content of the book per se, its structure is undermined by the previous publication of five of the nine main chapters, without substantive changes. Four of these chapters have been published in the open access journal Society and Conservation and the Discussion Forum section was at the time of review also freely available on the Springer website. Although it is highly commendable that the work of contributing authors is freely available to the conservation NGO community, greatly increasing the chances of garnering interest in dialogue, new and different forms of collaboration, it diminishes the value of the book itself.
In summary, the intent of the book to open up new and productive spaces of collaboration should be welcomed. It serves as a reminder to conservation NGO staff of the need to find space for reflection in practice, which may well be possible at an individual level but is challenging for an institution. Since its publication the book has helped me to frame new transdisciplinary collaborations and only time will tell how (un)comfortable these will turn out to be.
