Just conservation: The question of justice in global wildlife conservation

While there is a significant amount of discussion in philosophy on the ethics of wildlife conservation, there is relatively less discussion on the justice of conservation. By the "justice of conservation," I mean the question of what we owe to fellow human beings with respect to conservation goals and practices. The goal of this study is twofold: first to highlight the justice-gap in the morality of wildlife conservation and second to identify and frame two dimensions of global conservation justice for further discussion. Specifically, I suggest the need for more equitable approaches to conservation to address the problem of distributive unfairness in global conservation practices, and the need to "decolonize" conservation to ensure more deliberative fairness in how global conservation problems and solutions are determined.