Botanic gardens are often perceived as quaint institutions that host and display exotic plants for public education and entertainment purposes. Many people think of botanic gardens as living plant museums that attest to earlier times of botanical exploration and scientific discovery. Others see them as sites of respite from the hectic pace of modern living. Ironically, given the highly objectified characteristics of botanic garden natures, many seek these landscapes as a conduit for overcoming human alienation from “nature.” Perhaps for these reasons, for over a century now botanic gardens have become increasingly popular tourist sites, attracting millions of visitors each year. In fact, Dr. Richard Benfield’s research shows that visits to botanic gardens constitute a large percentage of the garden tourism industry, which is, in turn, one of the largest and fastest growing tourism sectors in the world. In the United States alone, “there were an estimated 78 million visitors to U.S. public gardens in a recent year—more than to Las Vegas and Orlando combined.”
There is, however, much more to botanic gardens. Once foundations of modernity, science, empire-building, and colonial expansion, botanic gardens not only remain as prime institutions of scientific research, but they have also been reinventing themselves as leading biodiversity conservation actors. Botanic gardens have taken up important roles in the conceptualization and development of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), as well as incorporated the implementation of GSPC targets and objectives into the core of their missions and mandates. Botanic gardens have extended their engagement with the exotic plant collections they have hosted for centuries to encompass the management of plants within their ecosystems. Botanic gardens have thus gone beyond their walls to link ex situ with in situ biodiversity conservation.
As part of these transformative processes, botanic gardens have endeavored to reforge their image as “introspective institutions,” dedicated to the production and dissemination of expert/elite knowledge, to that of forward-looking institutions that engage a burgeoning array of new publics and constituencies in the era of environmental concern. Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the international organization under which botanic gardens around the world coalesce to engage with the GSPC, evokes the adoption of a plethora of new social roles as central aspects of botanic garden biodiversity management. These goals include social integration, socioeconomic development, and food security. Hence, botanic garden interventions on biodiversity conservation are increasingly conceived as the management (i.e., governance) of relations between people and plants.
Research I have been conducting for the past three years confirms that botanic gardens are becoming increasingly important actors in the intersecting arenas of global, national, and regional biodiversity governance. However, this research also reveals that, notwithstanding excellent investigations of botanic gardens in contemporary biodiversity conservation, a concerted scholarly engagement with these issues needs much further development (these themes were explored and discussed at a recent conference).
Some of the key questions currently raising scholarly scrutiny in this context can be summarized as follows:
- To what extent do emerging structures and practices of botanic garden engagement with the GSPC reproduce colonial relations across botanic gardens, especially between those located in the Global South and botanic gardens in the Global North historically associated with empire-building?
- Do these processes relate to nation-building processes, and if so, how and to what effects?
- By embracing new social roles in biodiversity conservation management, botanic gardens are treading into realms formerly associated with state governance. What do these transformations portend in relation to the theorization of environmental governmentality and the production of environmental subjectivities?
- To what extent do these entanglements reproduce currently hegemonic relations between nation-states, corporate interests, and neoliberal conservation, and to what extent do they aim (and/or achieve) to subvert existing power matrices?
- What are the implications of these transformations for the politics of citizenship and, more specifically, for the politics of eco-citizenship?
- How are new “natures” being imagined, performed, and materialized in the context of the transformations evoked above? How do these intersect with present systems of inequality?
Katja Neves, Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, has investigated the reinvention of botanic gardens as purported leaders of biodiversity conservation through two research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She was the principal organizer of the international conference Leaders in Conservation: Botanic Gardens in the 21st Century and is editing a book based on works presented at this event. She is also writing a book on biodiversity conservation governance and environmental subjectivity, exploring the historical context and political implications entailed in the emergence of botanic gardens and kin institutions (such as zoos and natural science museums) as key actors in the global, national, and regional governance of biodiversity.
Cite as: Neves, Katja. 2014. “Reproducing Empire, Subverting Hegemony? Botanic Gardens in Biodiversity Conservation.” EnviroSociety. 4 December. www.envirosociety.org/2014/12/ reproducing-empire-subverting-hegemony-botanic-gardens-in-biodiversity-conservation.