The function and authority of practice-based experts in an era of biodiversity crisis

Abstract

Introduction: In an era of intersecting planetary crises, demand for environmental expertise is at a high point. Environment agencies, universities, consultants and global environmental assessments combined with a range of new technological tools offer views on the planet that are unprecedented in human history. In this paper, I will examine the role of practice-based experts that work at the physical interface of people and nature as a feature of this rapid accumulation of expert insights. Methods: The paper will be based on a combination of prior ethnographic fieldwork with conservation projects and a desk-based review of the literature. Results: I will examine - through examples - the institutional conditions that shape the function and authority of practice-based experts for nature. These experts do not predominantly deal with numbers and words, rather they dig, plant, cut, kill or care for the non-human (or more-than-human) worlds that they inhabit. They span from conservation practitioners to recreational hunters, Indigenous peoples to domestic gardeners, and they rely on a combination of written and tacit knowledge that is acquired through experience of careful observation, informal experimentation and socialisation. Yet, given the high stakes of the biodiversity crisis and the boom of information and communication technologies, there are also moves to further formalise and standardise practice-based expertise around nature through textbooks, training and agendas such as ‘evidence-based conservation’. Conclusions: I will conclude with an assessment of the extent to which practice-based experts physically working in and with nature are recognized (when and where) as legitimate experts in an era of biodiversity crisis and what might need to change in order to offer them an enhanced role in identifying and implementing more transformative responses to the continuing loss of nature worldwide.