Half Earth and beyond

Abstract

Abstract This chapter begins by discussing perhaps the most notable attempt to provide a large-scale, coordinated ‘solution’ to the biodiversity crisis: the Half Earth proposal. It offers an analysis of the moral costs that are likely to accompany any attempt to implement Half Earth, and suggests that the proposal, if enacted, would cause significant global injustice unless accompanied by robust side policies at the very least. This justifies a search for alternative policies that might deliver similar conservation outcomes, but with lower moral costs. The chapter provides an alternative package of policies which holds considerable promise and involves substantial legal protection for the land claims of indigenous and other marginalized peoples. It also includes a set of structural reforms in the global economy—including debt forgiveness and the removal of harmful subsidies among other policies—which, taken together, could make significant progress in tackling the biodiversity crisis while helping, rather than hindering, wider projects of global justice.