Conservation ’ s Friends in High Places : Neoliberalism , Networks , and the Transnational Conservation Elite

Despite a massive worldwide crisis of biodiversity loss, there have been considerable successes in global conservation.1 An ever-increasing amount of land is contained in protected areas, which now cover over 12 percent of the world’s land surface area, and over 25 percent in some countries.2 International conservation NGOs are growing in size and inouence, and global political structures give increasing prominence to conservation issues.3 Representations of biodiversity as exotic and endangered, occupying places where humans are destructive intruders, have become ubiquitous. Accompanying these successes have been profound changes in the way conservation works. Conservation is increasingly planned at a global scale. The roles of NGOs, corporations, and the state are increasingly indistinguishable. Market mechanisms and logics are becoming seen as the only way to do effective conservation.4 This article argues that at the heart of this trend lies a well-connected and networked elite, shaping conservation discourses and practices. It draws its membership from across NGOs, states, corporations, science, and the media and it works through personal contacts. Elite connections have been central since the emergence of a global conservation movement over a century ago,5 but the current elite is bigger, more diverse, more powerful, more effectively structured and more inouential than the elites of the past. Its emergence and structure are consequences of shifts in global environmental governance and