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. 2022 Feb 24;36(4):e13903.
doi: 10.1111/cobi.13903. Online ahead of print.

Making a case for the consideration of trust, justice and power in conservation relationships

Omar Saif  1 , Aidan Keane  2 , Sam Staddon  1
Affiliations

Making a case for the consideration of trust, justice and power in conservation relationships

Omar Saif et al. Conserv Biol. .

Abstract
in English, Spanish

In conservation, trust and justice are increasingly recognized as both intrinsically valuable and critical for successful socio-ecological outcomes. However, the interdependence between these concepts has not been explored. In reviewing the conservation trust scholarship, we find efforts to build trust between conservation and local actors, yet this is often conceived to incentivize local cooperation within dominant paradigms. We argue that trust-building which does not actively plan to address power asymmetries in conservation practice may inadvertently re-embed inequities, and therefore offer a justice-trust model to provide a critical analysis of conservation partnerships. We draw on environmental justice theory to better calibrate trust literature for the historical-political settings of conservation, especially in the Global South. We demonstrate that justice and trust share strong theoretical links with important practical implications for understanding relationships. We apply our justice-trust framework to multiple case-studies, exploring i) how perceptions of (in)justice can shape willingness to trust, and ii) the ways in which nature-dependent communities and marginalized conservation workers are trusted, or the conditions they give trust under, can lead to partnerships being perceived as (un)just. We argue that focusing on trust in tandem with justice can help identify power dynamics so they can be more readily addressed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Failure to consider trust without acknowledging perceptions of justice and power perpetuates imbalances in conservation relationships.

Keywords: Indigenous People and Local Communities; conservation organizations; conservation work; environmental justice; political ecology; trustworthiness.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Framework of conservation trust and justice based on trust, environmental justice, and political ecology scholarship. Letter labels on arrows correspond to case studies described in text and show relationships between components of the framework These connections are shaped and mediated by actor‐based, structural, and poststructural power
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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