Protected areas are by a mile the singularly most identifiable product of the conservation movement. They are our one “big idea.” In some form or another, they exist in nearly every country on the planet.

According to the World Database on Protected Areas, all 192 UN member states have at least one protected area, and so do another 27 overseas territories or semi-autonomous regions. There is probably not a corporation in the world that can claim that kind of coverage.
But in many conservation circles, protected areas seem to be falling out of favour. They have failed to prevent an accelerating loss of global biodiversity. They are seen as a paternalistic, colonial idea—one neither morally justifiable while people live in poverty nor up to the large-scale challenges facing today’s environment and biodiversity. Hectare by hectare, they are almost certainly not the most efficient approach to biodiversity conservation — but they might just be the most efficient approach to conservation, period.

And there’s the rub: Conservation has been spectacularly unsuccessful at selling the idea of biodiversity.

For 30 years, we’ve being trying to get people to believe in biodiversity — and it has never been as successful as the appeal of national parks (the quintessential protected area). When the conservation movement embraced “biodiversity,” scientists tuned in…and the public tuned out. Rather than provide a clear and inspiring mandate for protected areas, we made the reason for their establishment more prosaic and impenetrable.

Now we’re turning back to the people. Conservation to deliver the things YOU care about. Be it clean water, pollination, food security, or storm shelter — conservation can provide it.

This is conservation as a capitalist liberal democracy, in which the rights of an individual are supreme to the State: In order to be sustained, conservation efforts must always come out positive in any individual cost-benefit assessment. 

Far from being eternally marginalised in this brave new world, protected areas are being cleverly repositioned as the natural mechanism to deliver on conservation’s new promise — “nature’s benefits”. And so they should; for every failed protected area, there are probably two success stories. In general, protected areas have demonstrated remarkable legislative durability (although some have argued this durability is not necessarily positive for conservation, as it entrenches inefficiencies).

Even in anthropocentric conservation projects in which livelihoods are front and centre and biodiversity is something of a dirty word — when it comes to actual strategies on the ground, more often than not, some form of protected area is involved. This is partly because protected areas are what conservation knows and has expertise in (and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise); but it’s also partly because hard evidence to support more production-friendly conservation strategies is so far limited. (Thoroughly testing the utility of non-protected area strategies should be a priority for conservation.)

I’ve often heard it said that conservation, and protected areas in particular, have been too much about nature and not enough about people. This is undoubtedly true. However, counter to the opinion of many people I respect, I would argue that focusing on “nature’s benefits” actually stops short on this account — it makes nature about too few a people. It appeals to self-interest, when instead a bigger-than-self community spirit is needed.

And it is here where protected areas might be putting short-term strategic gains over long-term success.

Probably the most interesting report I’ve read this year is called Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values. Written by Tom Crompton of WWF-UK (a person with the wonderful title of “Change Strategist”), the report pulls together an impressive body of empirical evidence and recent research in psychology and cognitive sciences. Crompton’s thesis is essentially that tackling issues through appeals to individual interests — even when successful — serves to reinforce the perceived importance of these interests, simultaneously diminishing and undermining the value basis of concern about bigger-than-self issues.

The report argues that, far from being at the mercy of an immovable set of cultural values, environmental and humanitarian groups can influence the deep values of society through consistent and transparent messaging. And it is precisely these bigger-than-self values that “must be championed if we are to uncover the collective will to deal with today’s profound global challenges,” argues Crompton.

Protected areas are case in point. Realised as national parks, they are a fantastically egalitarian idea — more Paris Commune than American capitalism (ironic, given the U.S. origin of the modern protected-area idea). As Nigel Dudley so eloquently put it in his recent Science Chronicles article, protected areas are “at their best a demonstration of the finest in human society.”

So we need to recapture for protected areas the mantle as guardians of our shared natural heritage, for both present and future generations; a stewardship whose justification falls neither on biodiversity nor on personal interest. If that sounds like the ranting of a western pinko environmentalist — you’d be right. But I’m also fortunate enough to know firsthand that the notion of preserving natural heritage for current and future generations has resonance in the least developed places on the planet, in a way that the idea of “biodiversity” never did.

But this argument does not mean that we shouldn’t continue to focus protected areas in places and ways that deliver benefits to human communities in the vicinity. Nor does it mean that we shouldn’t talk about “nature’s benefits.” It simply means we need to be clear about our values and consistent with our messaging.

To borrow an example from Crompton’s report, one approach would be to subsume the economic argument within a wider moral imperative. Conservation could consistently emphasize the need to protect natural heritage for this and future generations — while also presenting clear evidence of the benefits that protected areas deliver for communities as a response to those concerned about the social consequences of that protection. This “heritage and benefits” message is no less about people than would be an appeal to self-interest; it’s just more consistent in its values.

Let’s hope for our children’s sake that, in our excessive zeal to make conservation a form a self-interest, we do not make protected areas unfashionable.