Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Three decades of biodiversity governance have largely failed to stop the ongoing environmental crisis of global species loss. Yet that governance has resulted in undeniably important political ...
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Three decades of biodiversity governance have largely failed to stop the ongoing environmental crisis of global species loss. Yet that governance has resulted in undeniably important political outcomes. In Counting Species, Rafi Youatt argues that the understanding of global biodiversity has produced a distinct vision and politics of nature, one that is bound up with ideas about species, norms of efficiency, and apolitical forms of technical management. Since its inception in the 1980s, biodiversity’s political power has also hinged on its affiliation with a series of political concepts. Biodiversity was initially articulated as a moral crime against the intrinsic value of all species. In the 1990s and early 2000s, biodiversity shifted toward an association with service provision in a globalizing world economy before attaching itself more recently to the discourses of security and resilience. Even as species extinctions continue, biodiversity’s role in environmental governance has become increasingly abstract. Yet the power of global biodiversity is eventually always localized and material when it encounters nonhuman life. In these encounters, Youatt finds reasons for optimism, tracing some of the ways that nonhuman life has escaped human social means. Counting Species compellingly offers both a political account of global biodiversity and a unique approach to political agency across the human–nonhuman divide.Less
Three decades of biodiversity governance have largely failed to stop the ongoing environmental crisis of global species loss. Yet that governance has resulted in undeniably important political outcomes. In Counting Species, Rafi Youatt argues that the understanding of global biodiversity has produced a distinct vision and politics of nature, one that is bound up with ideas about species, norms of efficiency, and apolitical forms of technical management. Since its inception in the 1980s, biodiversity’s political power has also hinged on its affiliation with a series of political concepts. Biodiversity was initially articulated as a moral crime against the intrinsic value of all species. In the 1990s and early 2000s, biodiversity shifted toward an association with service provision in a globalizing world economy before attaching itself more recently to the discourses of security and resilience. Even as species extinctions continue, biodiversity’s role in environmental governance has become increasingly abstract. Yet the power of global biodiversity is eventually always localized and material when it encounters nonhuman life. In these encounters, Youatt finds reasons for optimism, tracing some of the ways that nonhuman life has escaped human social means. Counting Species compellingly offers both a political account of global biodiversity and a unique approach to political agency across the human–nonhuman divide.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
The introduction introduces the global environmental and political context within which biodiversity operates, argues for a broadening of political agency to living things, and outlines the structure ...
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The introduction introduces the global environmental and political context within which biodiversity operates, argues for a broadening of political agency to living things, and outlines the structure of the book.Less
The introduction introduces the global environmental and political context within which biodiversity operates, argues for a broadening of political agency to living things, and outlines the structure of the book.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Chapter 1 identifies the important conceptual innovations in the birth of biodiversity hotspots in the 1980s, including the intrinsic value of species; the power of pattern and systems, and a global ...
More
Chapter 1 identifies the important conceptual innovations in the birth of biodiversity hotspots in the 1980s, including the intrinsic value of species; the power of pattern and systems, and a global mapping of key points of efficiency for species conservation, and explores the politics that innovations helped motivate.Less
Chapter 1 identifies the important conceptual innovations in the birth of biodiversity hotspots in the 1980s, including the intrinsic value of species; the power of pattern and systems, and a global mapping of key points of efficiency for species conservation, and explores the politics that innovations helped motivate.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Chapter 2 focuses on the global biodiversity census started in the 1990s. It suggests that the biodiversity census is one example of the change in disciplinary power when nonhuman life explicitly ...
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Chapter 2 focuses on the global biodiversity census started in the 1990s. It suggests that the biodiversity census is one example of the change in disciplinary power when nonhuman life explicitly becomes an object of political governance. While the census, aimed at conservation goals, has mixed outcomes, nonhuman species manage to disrupt biopolitical impulses towards smooth governing of populations in interesting ways.Less
Chapter 2 focuses on the global biodiversity census started in the 1990s. It suggests that the biodiversity census is one example of the change in disciplinary power when nonhuman life explicitly becomes an object of political governance. While the census, aimed at conservation goals, has mixed outcomes, nonhuman species manage to disrupt biopolitical impulses towards smooth governing of populations in interesting ways.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Until recently, World Heritage Sites were selected using separate natural criteria and cultural criteria. Because of the problematic political implications of these categories as well as the ...
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Until recently, World Heritage Sites were selected using separate natural criteria and cultural criteria. Because of the problematic political implications of these categories as well as the pragmatic difficulties in cleanly identifying natural or cultural sties, UNESCO moved towards articulating hybrid selection criteria. Chapter 3 analyzes the evolution of UNESCO’s heritage site classification over time, focusing particularly on two sites in Meteora, Greece and Uluru Rock, Australia.Less
Until recently, World Heritage Sites were selected using separate natural criteria and cultural criteria. Because of the problematic political implications of these categories as well as the pragmatic difficulties in cleanly identifying natural or cultural sties, UNESCO moved towards articulating hybrid selection criteria. Chapter 3 analyzes the evolution of UNESCO’s heritage site classification over time, focusing particularly on two sites in Meteora, Greece and Uluru Rock, Australia.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Chapter 4 compares the rise of two new initiatives, urban biodiversity and rewilding, in the context of a more explicitly designed global nature made by humans. Looking both at global policy ...
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Chapter 4 compares the rise of two new initiatives, urban biodiversity and rewilding, in the context of a more explicitly designed global nature made by humans. Looking both at global policy initiatives and at New York City as a local case, the chapter considers how urban biodiversity is a comparatively new object of environmental governance. Pointing towards a new politics of wilding, the chapter also considers how rewilding as a form of practicing biodiversity might able to be less beholden to the technical, market-driven, and anti-political processes considered in the preceding chapters.Less
Chapter 4 compares the rise of two new initiatives, urban biodiversity and rewilding, in the context of a more explicitly designed global nature made by humans. Looking both at global policy initiatives and at New York City as a local case, the chapter considers how urban biodiversity is a comparatively new object of environmental governance. Pointing towards a new politics of wilding, the chapter also considers how rewilding as a form of practicing biodiversity might able to be less beholden to the technical, market-driven, and anti-political processes considered in the preceding chapters.
Rafi Youatt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694112
- eISBN:
- 9781452950617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694112.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
The conclusion revisits questions surrounding human and nonhuman agency first raised in the introduction, and considers what a new, revitalized form of biodiversity politics might look like.
The conclusion revisits questions surrounding human and nonhuman agency first raised in the introduction, and considers what a new, revitalized form of biodiversity politics might look like.
