Rebalancing Conservation and Development

Our work in this volume and in related conference panel presentations in the Special Integration Group ‘Balancing Individualism and Collectivism’ stresses the importance of an inter-relational approach based on an awareness that human existence is co-determined by multiple species. Indigenous cosmology appreciates and expresses this relationship as totemic kinship and goes further by recognising the continuity of all forms of organic life, which is now supported by our realisation that we are genetically connected. Furthermore, the inorganic elements of which the human species is made return to the cycle of life to nurture organic life. Our work on earth jurisprudence and multispecies relationships remains important as a way to re-focus debate.