Nature conservation
A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism,[1] environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities.
[5][6] The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of the U.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity.
Philosophers have attached intrinsic value to different aspects of nature, whether this is individual organisms (biocentrism) or ecological wholes such as species or ecosystems (ecoholism).
How such values are assessed and exchanged among people determines the social, political and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced.
In 2022 the United Kingdom introduced the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act which lists all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans and cephalopods as sentient beings.
The posthumous publication of Henry David Thoreau's Walden established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man.
The consumer conservation ethic has been defined as the attitudes and behaviors held and engaged in by individuals and families that ultimately serve to reduce overall societal consumption of energy.
[15] Increasing numbers of philosophers and scientists have made its maturation possible by considering the relationships between human beings and organisms with the same rigor.
The origins of this ethic can be traced back to many different philosophical and religious beliefs; that is, these practices has been advocated for centuries.
[19] In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including biological diversity.
"[24] Simply put, sustainable living does make a difference by compiling many individual actions that encourage the protection of biological diversity.
While many countries' efforts to preserve species and their habitats have been government-led, those in the North Western Europe tended to arise out of the middle-class and aristocratic interest in natural history, expressed at the level of the individual and the national, regional or local learned society.
[25] This in part reflects the absence of wilderness areas in heavily cultivated Europe, as well as a longstanding interest in laissez-faire government in some countries, like the UK, leaving it as no coincidence that John Muir, the Scottish-born founder of the National Park movement (and hence of government-sponsored conservation) did his sterling work in the US, where he was the motor force behind the establishment of such national parks as Yosemite and Yellowstone.
[citation needed] The terms conservation and preservation are frequently conflated outside the academic, scientific, and professional kinds of literature.
The United States' National Park Service offers the following explanation of the important ways in which these two terms represent very different conceptions of environmental protection ethics: Conservation and preservation are closely linked and may indeed seem to mean the same thing.
This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems, and economic factors.
