The Problem With Conservation Measures - The Lost Opportunity Mentality and Its Negative Effects

It is very easy to say things like: “Conservation measures should be about the environment first and foremost”. However, history has shown us that most conservation efforts have been anything but the selfless measures they are supposed to be. The “Lost Opportunity” mentality that led many of the early colonialist forces to explore and exploit the natural resources of faraway lands made sense during those times. However, that mentality is still very much alive today. Today, when people know a lot more about the long-term devastations caused by the unscrupulous exploitation of resources. Lost Opportunity is disguised under the cover of conservationism and that poses many problems for the environment and the world in general. The difficult in identifying countries’, and other relevant actors’ true intentions in crafting and carrying out conservation measures is a reason for us to adopt a more skeptical stance on environmental conservation efforts.

Countries and companies are almost always led by some kind of self-serving interest in their conservation efforts. How could it be otherwise? Borrowing a little from the rationalist scholarship in international relations, countries will always be concerned with their interests first. Everything else comes second. That mentality proves problematic for matters that require international cooperation, such as the environment. How to justify the costs of conservation efforts (in other territories than their own) to countries when they cannot “get anything out of it”? In this case, that “anything” means something tangible such as economic profit or security. From that perspective it is easy to see why countries adopt the Lost Opportunity mentality when dealing with conservation measures targeted at underdeveloped regions. It makes sense to argue that their resources are being badly managed, or even wasted, due to their lack of governmental sophistication and financial power, and, because of that, it warrants international intervention. Natural resources, such as forests, create the premise that allows countries to justify their interference in another’s sovereignty under the guise of protection of something that is of global interest. This interference often exacerbates the problem by providing underdeveloped governments with the funding necessary to oppress their people. Lost Opportunity is then a tool used to justify a sort of environmental neo-colonialism, and it is also what makes conservation measures usually fail.

The Lost Opportunity notion came about with the first colonialist efforts. That was a time when countries were most worried about riches, and the environment received little to no consideration. There was not a whole lot of knowledge about the effects of deforestation on the environment, or how the extraction of some minerals could damage water sources. There was also very little respect given to local peoples and how they were affected negatively by the butting in of foreign powers for their own selfish reasons. However, we know better today. That makes the fact that countries are still driven by this idea of opportunities being lost by people who do not know how to take advantage of them all the more disturbing. Conservation measures need to be subject to severe scrutiny before being implemented to assure that their purpose is to protect the environment. It must take into consideration its impact on local peoples. We can no longer get by with any kind of self-serving, colonialist project disguised as conservationism. We have to get smarter.