Biodiversity conservation is a critical environmental issue that has been marked by clashes between transnational and local priorities. In Between Preservation and Exploitation, Kemi Fuentes-George challenges conventional wisdom regarding the importance of marrying conservation with global neoliberalism. In contrast, he argues that successful conservation depends on linking scientific consensus with social justice, and develops a position with important implications for research, theory, and practice.

His book skillfully tackles a central question in the literature on transnational advocacy networks (TANs): under what conditions are TANs successful? He builds on previous work to answer this query in three important ways. First, he considers how TANs can influence policy and behavior in the implementation stage of policy-making. This stage has been relatively less studied than agenda-setting and rule-making, but is crucial to determining the success of the conservation agenda. Second, he adopts a comparative lens on the question of TAN influence, examining the factors that led to success or failure in four separate cases. In doing so, he helps to balance the TAN literature by examining cases where advocacy was not successful along with those where advocates achieved their aims. Third, he considers the influence of TANs on the behavior of local actors in developing countries. His focus on these contexts—which are critical for conservation outcomes—contributes to our understanding of how transnational advocacy works in settings that scholars study less often.

Fuentes-George’s central argument is that in order to influence the design and implementation of policy, TANs must generate a scientific consensus, create social relationships with local actors, and advocate for biodiversity in ways that promote local environmental justice. He grounds this argument in a constructivist approach that emphasizes the role of ideas in shaping outcomes in world politics (p. xl), speaking specifically to the importance of framing in advocacy, and to the important role for scientific evidence as mobilized through epistemic communities.

The book is structured around four detailed and well-written qualitative case studies. These case studies draw on extensive original data collection and fieldwork in the form of interviews, documents, and participant observation. The narratives are extensively documented and are accessible to both specialists and non-specialists alike. The first case—bird conservation in Jamaica—documents the transformation of an unsuccessful advocacy effort oriented around a neoliberal framing to a successful campaign with a justice-oriented framing. It argues that local justice framing strengthened conservationist advocacy and contributed to TAN success (p. 45). The second case, regarding the successful campaign on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, draws similar conclusions (p. 94).

The third and fourth case studies concern advocacy campaigns that were not successful in achieving their goals. The chapter about biodiversity in the Mesoamerican biological corridor suggests that failure to generate a scientific consensus can contribute to lack of TAN influence, but that the network also failed to sustain participatory mechanisms with the public. As a result, the network lost its connection to local environmental justice claims and could not capitalize on its ties with policy-makers. The case concerning bird conservation in Egypt also concerns an unsuccessful—or at least unsatisfying—outcome, which Fuentes-George also attributes to a lack of connection with local actors and with policy-makers.

In the final chapter of the book he considers how the local contestation that he describes may relate to regime complexity. Here, he highlights interesting cases where local actors discover that international obligations overlap at the level of implementation, and may use other international obligations to support or challenge the legitimacy of the emerging policy (p. 196). He thus suggests, among other lessons, that domestic and local actors can engage in “forum shopping” under regime complexity.

Fuentes-George appropriately draws on qualitative case-comparative methods to gauge both the degree of TAN success and the factors that explain the outcome. As much of the argument hinges on the case evidence, however, I would have enjoyed a more extensive discussion of the case selection process (p. xxxiv). While he reports having selected cases to maximize variation in democratic context, I would have also been interested to see a most different or most similar case comparison, which could provide leverage in controlling for alternative explanations and isolating the impact of the causal factors.

Of the four cases, I found the Jamaican case the most effective because it compellingly demonstrated that shifting to the justice framing increased the influence of the campaign. But for the two “failure” cases, it was difficult to see how the research design could effectively speak to potential alternative explanations. For example, were these two problems simply more difficult than the previous two? Were there fewer resources available for advocacy? Building on this important comparative approach to studies of TANs, I wonder if a within-country design—or another type of paired comparison or matched case selection—might provide additional evidence in favor of the three identified factors.

The book also tackles the vexing issue of how to measure “influence” as a political outcome. This challenge is particularly acute for this book because biodiversity outcomes are not easily measurable on the timescale of a social-scientific study. Fuentes-George takes a reasonable approach to this challenge by specifying intermediate outcomes—ability of networks to shape project design, stimulate implementation, and change practices in private sector actors—that indicate influence. This suggests, as he notes, that influence is not binary, but could be conceived of as having different forms or dimensions (p. xxxvi). For example, is it possible that some TAN attributes are more important for policy influence as opposed to private sector influence?

One key theme in Between Preservation and Exploitation is the importance of environmental justice in generating effective local conservation. This theme resonates with a larger discussion among practitioners about the importance of involving local peoples and resource users in effective conservation efforts. The discussion of social and environmental justice in this book considers the importance of both distributive and procedural justice in biodiversity campaigns. In my reading of the cases, the “justice” dimension seemed to encompass the extent to which the scientific community had local connections, irrespective of whether the local actors framed their actions or motivations in terms of justice. This led me to wonder whether it was the justice component or the local connections doing the explanatory work in this study. It also made me wonder where the conceptual boundaries should be drawn around the concept of justice. For example, if TANs amplify local demands for job creation in sustainable tourism, is this an example of justice, local connections, global neoliberalism, or all three?

Finally, Fuentes-George draws our attention to three factors that are demonstrated to be linked to network influence. The next step for this research agenda would be to explain how these factors emerge in the first place. What explains why some networks generate scientific consensus, while others do not? What explains why some networks are able to build needed ties with policy-makers while others are not? One interesting extension of this project would be to consider how political context may influence the emergence of both of these factors, with important implications for policy. As NGOs in particular are responsible for a large amount of policy implementation, another possible extension would be to examine how the three factors identified in the book—especially the argument about environmental justice—influence the success of the direct service provision activities of non-state actors in conservation.

Overall, the fields of international relations and environmental studies will benefit greatly from Between Preservation and Exploitation. Fuentes-George should be congratulated on a sophisticated study that focuses our attention on the conditions under which advocacy matters for conservation. He makes an important contribution by building bridges connecting the mobilization process to the policy process, broadening the scope and relevance of this research.