Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Examining protected areas (PAs) management, this paper discusses how current and dominant management practices constantly re-assert ‘Eden’ myths of a wild nature that frequently justify instrumental actions of landscape management. Highlighting the conundrums and disconnects that exist in adaptive management (AM) practice, I suggest re-examining the contradictions that the twenty-first century continues to impose on AM in practice within PAs. Building on more-than-human geographies and the concept of ‘el sentipensar’ (Feeling-Thinking), I consider how ‘affective’ knowing (embodied) extends agency to the non-human in ways that support some of the earlier expectations for AM—such as experiential learning. The paper considers how such an attempt to transcend the limits of instrumental and institutional knowing repositions non-humans, and ‘el sentipensar’ is incorporated into AM as a force for reconsidering PAs—their temporal and spatial boundarying, their effective non-fixedness and their potential for extending conservation beyond ‘Eden’.