Despite widespread support for the idea of protecting nature—omnipresent in public discourse, politics, intergovernmental agreements, environmental activism, and especially in conservation—there remains deep unclarity about what this protection actually entails. What does it mean to protect nature? Why, how, and above all, what kind of nature should be protected? These questions lie at the heart of ongoing debates within environmental philosophy, conservation, and conservation ethics. Seen perspicuously, these debates reveal that nature protection is at a crossroads—for a variety of reasons, we have reached a point where continuing in the current direction is no longer viable—and the discussion on how to move forward is confused and stalled. It is perhaps not surprising that this perplexity has much to do with the ambiguity of the term ‘nature,’ which carries an almost magical appeal and evokes deep passions.

In my presentation, I seek to clarify contemporary discourse on nature protection by analyzing the underlying understandings of ‘nature’ involved in it. I aim to uncover the different, often implicit, conceptions of nature that inform the structure of nature protection. I identify three dominant clusters of understandings of ‘nature’ in nature protection—(1) as non-human, (2) as natural capital, and (3) as home(s)—through which I elucidate the character of various approaches to nature protection and expose the tensions and limitations that these understandings of ‘nature’ tend to generate. By clarifying these—mostly unreflected—underlying characteristics of current approaches to nature protection, my research seeks to contribute to a more coherent and intelligible discourse about the future direction of nature protection—one that can better navigate the deep disagreements and confusions currently fragmenting conservation ethics.