Conservation Is About People (Even When We Pretend It's About Trees)

Confessions of a conservationist who thought saving nature was mostly about understanding nature.

Like many conservationists, I started my career believing that conservation was fundamentally about nature.

I was trained as a biologist. I loved fieldwork, collecting data, observing species, understanding ecosystems, and trying to make sense of the extraordinary complexity of the natural world.

There was something wonderfully straightforward about it. You went into the field, asked scientific questions, collected evidence, analyzed your findings, and hopefully contributed a little more knowledge to help protect the planet.

Of course, nature was never simple. But at least the questions seemed clear.

Where are the species? What threatens them? How do ecosystems function? What can science tell us about protecting them?

I genuinely believed that if we understood nature well enough, we could figure out how to conserve it.

And then, somewhere along the way, people happened.

The unexpected career turn

Life has a funny way of taking you places you never planned to go.

My path gradually moved away from purely biological research and toward the much messier world of working with people, communities, organizations, and eventually regional networks.

Suddenly, the questions were different.

Why do people make decisions that seem to go against their own long-term interests? Why do some communities embrace conservation initiatives while others resist them? Why do perfectly reasonable ideas fail once they leave the comfort of a project proposal?

And perhaps my favorite question: why is something that looks so simple on paper can be incredibly complicated in real life?

I began to understand that conservation wasn't just about ecological processes. It was about human behavior. About aspirations, fears, incentives, relationships, identity, power, and trust.

It was about what people wanted. And, just as importantly, what they didn't want.

Things that don't always fit neatly into a scientific paper or a project logframe.

Different places, surprisingly familiar stories

Working with regional networks brought another important realization.

Different countries, different ecosystems, different cultures, different institutions. Yet, again and again, I found myself recognizing the same patterns.

People wanted to be heard, but often felt that decisions had already been made.

Organizations talked about collaboration, but struggled to share control.

Projects celebrated participation, yet sometimes confused inviting people to a meeting with actually involving them in decisions.

There were tensions between local priorities and institutional agendas. Between short-term needs and long-term environmental goals. Between what donors wanted to measure and what communities considered important.

And, of course, there was trust.

That invisible ingredient that everyone agrees is essential, but that rarely receives its own budget line.

I started noticing that some of the most important conservation work wasn't happening when we were collecting data or presenting technical findings. It was happening during conversations, negotiations, disagreements, and the slow process of building relationships.

Sometimes over coffee. Sometimes in community meetings. Sometimes in conversations that had absolutely nothing to do with the project we had originally come to discuss.

The ecosystems changed. The languages changed. The institutional arrangements changed.

But the human dynamics were remarkably familiar.

Of course, every community has its own history, challenges, and priorities. There is no single formula for working with people. But the more places I worked across, the more I understood that recognizing those differences was just as important as recognizing our shared patterns.

Then came climate change. New vocabulary, familiar challenges.

Fast forward to my work in the climate arena.

New acronyms. New frameworks. New funding mechanisms. New conferences. A seemingly endless supply of ambitious commitments.

Now we talk about climate resilience, locally led adaptation, climate finance, just transitions, and transformational change.

And these are important conversations.

But here's what strikes me: we are still struggling with many of the same questions.

Who gets to decide?

Whose knowledge counts?

Who benefits?

Who carries the costs?

What motivates people to change their behavior?

And how do we build the trust needed to make change possible?

We talk about putting communities at the center of climate action. But are we really ready to let communities influence the direction of that action, even when their priorities are different from ours?

We talk about locally led solutions. But how much leadership are we actually willing to share?

We talk about transforming systems. But do we understand the people, relationships, and institutions that make those systems work?

Sometimes I feel like we've changed the vocabulary faster than we've changed the way we work.

And I say we deliberately. Because I've been part of these processes too.

People are not a project component

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that people don't exist to make our conservation or climate projects successful.

They have their own lives.

They have families, responsibilities, ambitions, worries, and competing priorities. They make decisions based on a much broader reality than the environmental problem we're trying to solve.

A forest that represents biodiversity and carbon storage to a conservationist may also represent income, cultural identity, security, opportunity, or a source of conflict to someone who lives nearby.

Neither perspective necessarily tells the whole story.

And people don't always agree with each other, either. Communities aren't homogeneous groups with one voice, one priority, or one vision of the future.

There are differences in power, access, gender, generation, livelihoods, and interests.

Understanding these dynamics isn't an optional social component of environmental work.

It is environmental work.

What biology taught me, and what people taught me

I haven't stopped being a biologist.

Science still shapes how I see the world. Evidence matters. Ecological knowledge matters. Understanding natural systems is essential, particularly as climate change introduces new uncertainties and pressures.

But experience has taught me something that wasn't always obvious when I was starting out.

Knowing what needs to happen is not the same as understanding how change happens.

Science can help us understand what is happening to an ecosystem and what might help restore it.

But it cannot, on its own, tell us how to build agreement, navigate conflicting interests, overcome distrust, or create the conditions for people to work together.

And those are often the things that determine whether conservation efforts succeed, fail, or simply disappear when the project funding runs out.

I entered this field fascinated by the complexity of ecosystems.

I stayed fascinated by the complexity of people.

And perhaps the most surprising realization is how deeply connected those two worlds really are.

So, what now?

I don't have a magic formula for working with communities. In fact, the longer I work in conservation and climate initiatives, the less convinced I am that magic formulas exist.

But I've learned to ask different questions.

Not only What environmental problem are we trying to solve? but also Whose problem is it, and how do they see it?

Not only How do we get communities involved? but Who defined the initiative in the first place?

Not only How do we change people's behavior? but What needs to change in the systems, institutions, and incentives around them?

And perhaps most importantly, not only How do we deliver a successful project? but What will remain when we're gone?

These questions have followed me from biodiversity conservation to regional networks and now into climate action.

Different settings. Different terminology. Often the same underlying challenges.

Maybe that's why, after all these years, I keep coming back to one simple thought:

Conservation was never only about saving nature. It was always about understanding our relationship with it, and with each other.

I just needed a few years outside the field collecting biological data to fully appreciate that.

And honestly, people are much harder to study than trees.

At least trees don't ask you to revise the project budget.