Conservation of coastal environments in North Atlantic Patagonia: a critical review

Abstract

Through the critical lenses of philosophy, history and political ecology, we will go through the different approaches used, historically, by the conservation science to protect the Patagonian coastal environments, to end up proposing an integral and overcoming alternative: the social-ecological systems perspective (SES). In this chapter, we will go through the state-of-the-art of the current debates, both conceptual and praxiological, around conservation science, evaluating its implications on the conservation of coastal environments in Patagonia. We begin with the most used theories in environmental conservation, their philosophical roots and their contrasting and dichotomous approaches and strategies (e.g., nature vs. society/culture; reductionism vs. holism; structuralism vs. functionalism; intrinsic vs. instrumental valuation of nature; mainstream conservation vs. new conservation; among others) used to know and understand the (socio)ecosystems which it want to conserve. Then we will analyze how these contradictions are expressed in the Patagonian coast, generating a series of challenges for the conservation and management of the natural and cultural common goods of the region. Finally, we present the central arguments of what, in our opinion, is an overcoming approach to deal with these contradictions: the hermeneutics -in constant co-construction- of SES.