Abstract

Although conservation interventions are intended to improve our relations with nature and rarely set out to cause harm to people, this is not always the case. While there continue to be numerous assessments of the negative social impacts of conservation interventions after they have been implemented, there are few frameworks which help to avoid such situations.

I will begin this presentation by sharing some well-documented cases of harm caused by conservation interventions. Secondly, I will suggest that conservation interventions should thoroughly examine potential harms to people, and the underlying mechanisms of these, before they begin. I will propose the idea of ‘dark logic’ models to help guide such evaluations of potential harms and their underlying mechanisms. Lastly, I will use ‘dark logic’ to evaluate how harm to people might have been avoided in the conservation interventions presented, and what this might mean for future conservation interventions.