Rob Small's Masters Thesis: Uptake and the success of insect ...

Chapter 2
International and Papua New Guinean Conservation
History of Conservation Thought
In the hundred and twenty year period since the formation of the world’s first national park
in Yellowstone to the present day there has been an enormous upswell in general public
concern for nature. In the global north and increasingly in the global south there has been a
change in conception of nature from something that should be dominated by man to a
construct that, increasingly, is to be nurtured.
Poll data shows that the environment is an urgent and growing issue among global south
mass publics, who are critical of government passivity and corporate corruption and are
mobilising themselves in thousands of local movements. Unlike in the north, southern
greens are not effectively organised as national parties but form networks of grass roots
environmental groups led by elites and thus have direct access to decision makers in
leading sectors. Although southern green discourse is not highly developed in terms of
ideological of theoretical consistency it has the advantage of substituting the apocalyptic
quasi-religious style of its northern counterpart for a scientific discourse that is easier for
elites to swallow (Peritore, 1999). Whatever the cause behind this general increase in
environmentalist thought, the attending shift in public opinion and subsequent impacts on
policy formation will be an important contributing factor to conservation practice in the
future.
24