Title
The Bottleneck and the Breakthrough: A Theory of Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene.
Author(s)
Sanderson, Eric; Robinson, John; Walston, Joe
Published
2017
Abstract
For the first time in the Anthropocene, the global demographic and economic trends that have resulted in unprecedented destruction of the environment appear to be creating the necessary conditions for a possible renaissance of nature. Here we propose a scenario of social-environmental change that incorporates the insights provided by the well-known demographic transition theory and connects it to observed changes in economic consumption and poverty alleviation driven by urbanization. We present data showing how urbanization simultaneously influences all three of the factors of the I=PAT formulation, noting that while these factors have increased human influence on biodiversity in the past, in the future they may drive decreases in human impacts on the environment, creating new opportunities for conservation. Drawing reasonable inferences from current patterns, a hundred years from now the Earth may be inhabited by between eight and ten billion people, very few of whom live in extreme poverty, 70-80% of whom live in towns and cities, and nearly all of whom participate in a technologically driven, interconnected economy. We argue that conservation efforts need to understand and adapt to the challenges and opportunities afforded by rural-to-urban migration, the expansion of towns and cities, and associated changes in poverty and consumption; how will these factors transform our definition of conservation success and what is adequate? How does conservation success change by region and across time? We argue that by recognizing the shifting dynamics of these macro-drivers, conservation has the potential to transform itself from a discipline managing declines (“bottleneck”) to a transformative movement of recovery (“breakthrough”).
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